I wake to the notification hum—
three likes, two messages, one reminder
that I exist in someone's algorithm.
The coffee tastes like yesterday's rain.
I stand at the kitchen window, watching
a woman across the street water plants
in careful circles, her hand steady
as a metronome.
Belonging is a word I keep
in my back pocket, worn smooth
like a stone from the Thames.
I take it out sometimes,
hold it up to the light,
put it back.
---
Last night I dreamed in Japanese—
not the Japanese I studied,
but the kind that lives beneath
the floorboards of my childhood,
all particle and gesture,
no translation possible.
When I woke, my mouth remembered
how to shape okaeri,
but there was no one here
to say it to.
---
The translation I'm working on
has a line about loneliness
that won't carry over.
In English, it sounds like complaint.
In Japanese, it's just a fact,
clean as bone.
I write: solitude
I write: aloneness
I write: the quality of being singular
None of them are right.
Maybe some things shouldn't
cross borders.
---
On the train this morning,
a stranger's shoulder touched mine
for three stops.
We didn't look at each other,
didn't apologize,
just shared that small warmth
like a secret we'd both keep.
Later, I'll think about
all the tenderness
that has no name,
all the ways we fail
to say you matter
until we say nothing at all.
#poetry #identity #displacement #belonging