The train announcements come in three languages now—
first Japanese, clipped and certain,
then English, stretched thin over unfamiliar phonemes,
finally Mandarin, a river I cannot cross.

I used to know which one was mine.

In the convenience store at 2 AM,
the clerk's irasshaimase hangs in the air
like a question I've forgotten how to answer.
I buy onigiri and a bottle of tea,
my tongue heavy with all the words for thank you,
none of them quite right.

My mother texts in romaji because
her phone doesn't have a Japanese keyboard.
Genki? she asks, and I reply in English:
I'm fine.

両方 neither both—
the hyphen in Japanese-British,
that small mark holding two worlds
at arm's length.

When I translate, I live in the space between.
Natsukashii becomes "nostalgic" and loses
its weight, the way it sits in your chest
like a stone you've been carrying since childhood.

Some days I think I am fluent in neither language,
only in the silence that follows
when someone asks, Where are you from?

 

—

 

In the dream I am reading a book
but the words keep switching scripts mid-sentence.
Hiragana bleeds into Latin alphabet,
kanji crumbles into something
that looks like meaning but isn't.

I wake up in London
to the sound of the neighbor's kettle.

The radiator clicks. The sky is that particular shade of gray
that doesn't exist in Tokyo, where even winter
comes in high definition.

I make coffee. I check my phone.
A friend in Shibuya has posted a photo of cherry blossoms,
too early, confused by the warm February.

I write back: Beautiful.

I don't say: I am jealous of flowers
that know when to bloom,
that have a season to return to.

The coffee is bitter. I drink it anyway.
Outside, someone is speaking Polish or Russian,
another language I will never learn,
another border I will never cross.

I am home, I tell myself.
I am home.

The radiator clicks again,
a heartbeat in a language
I am trying to believe.

#poetry #identity #belonging #displacement