Light catches the edge of the kitchen knife
at 6 AM, the hour between sleep
and subway, when the city hums
a sound you can't translate. I chop
scallions for miso soup my mother
taught me over video call. Her hands
moved through pixels, mine
through steam. Komorebi—
no English word for light
through leaves, but there is a word
for homesick: a sickness of home,
or sick for home. I don't know
which I am. The scallions smell
green and sharp, a small knife
of memory. I eat standing up.

---

The train doors close
on a woman's goodbye. She pulls
her hand back, laughing,
and I think of all the times
I've left a room mid-sentence,
forgetting what I meant to say
in the language I meant to say it.
My tongue lives in two countries
and belongs to neither. At the next stop
a man gets on with wet hair,
smelling of morning and some floral
shampoo. We stand too close,
swaying with the train's rough affection,
strangers held together
by metal and momentum. I think
this is the only kind of touching
I trust. When I get off
he doesn't look up. I carry
the smell of his shampoo
all day, like a word
I can't quite place.

---

You texted me in Japanese
but your autocorrect made it English:
I'm already here. I liked
the mistake. Lately I dream
in subtitles, wake up
translating the morning news
in my head. Today a woman
on the radio said nostalgia
is from the Greek: nostos, homecoming,
algos, pain. So it's not
the past we ache for
but the return. And I thought
of your text, how you are
already here, and I am still
arriving. My body moves
through stations and grocery stores,
my mouth shapes English vowels
at the café, but some part of me
is standing at the door
of my mother's apartment,
key in hand, not yet
turning the lock.

#poetry #identity #bilingual #nostalgia