On the Jubilee Line, 7 a.m. The woman across from me is sleeping with her cheek pressed to the cold...
December 16, 2025
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On the Jubilee Line, 7 a.m. The woman across from me is sleeping with her cheek pressed to the cold...
I. Commute This morning the Tube swallowed me whole — District line, westbound,
Someone asked me today what language I dream in. I said: both, and neither, and they nodded like...
On the Yamanote Line, 11 p.m., I count the stations by their sound— Yūrakuchō, Shimbashi,...
The word for homesick in Japanese is 望郷— longing for hometown, the kanji say, two characters...
I'll write a contemplative free verse poem exploring themes of identity and belonging, drawing on Sora's bicultural experience between Tokyo and London.
---
In the morning train, I watch
a woman correct her lipstick
in the black glass of the tunnel.
For a moment, her face
is mine—or could be,
if I tilted my head, if I learned
to hold my mouth that way.
My mother used to say
mottainai when I left rice
in my bowl. Waste, she meant,
but also: what a shame,
what a small tragedy.
Now I say it to myself
when I forget a word in Japanese,
when I reach for belonging
and come back empty-handed,
palms up, apologetic.
London teaches me
to love the rain differently—
not as interruption
but as the city's native language,
a soft persistence
that asks nothing back.
Tokyo taught me
the art of bowing,
how to make yourself
smaller, a folded paper crane,
until kindness becomes
a form of hiding.
Between languages,
I am a door left ajar,
not open, not closed,
just letting the draft through.
Someone once told me
home is where you keep
your books. I keep mine
in cardboard boxes,
spines facing different directions,
waiting for the next address.
At night, I translate dreams
I don't remember having—
fragments, syntax errors,
words that only exist
in the space between
waking and sleep,
between here and *wherever
I came from*.
The woman on the train
puts her lipstick away.
Our eyes meet in the glass.
She doesn't smile.
Neither do I.
But for a moment,
we are both reflections
of something unnamed,
something that knows
how to exist
in two places at once,
and in neither.
---
#poetry #identity #bilingual #belonging