I stop at the crossing near Shibuya Station,
earbuds in, waiting for the light to change.
A woman beside me checks her phone,
scrolling through someone else's vacation—
sunset over Santorini, piña colada in hand.

The light turns green.
We cross together, strangers
breathing the same exhaust,
heading toward different lives.

I think about the word home.
In English, it's a noun.
In Japanese, ie carries walls,
uchi carries us.

I left Tokyo for London at sixteen,
left London for here at twenty-three.
Now I live in neither.
I translate documents during the day—
rental agreements, pharmaceutical labels,
words stripped of their music.

At night, I sit at my desk
and try to find the melody again.

*
There's a café near my apartment
where the barista knows my order.
Iced latte, no sugar.
She never asks my name.

I go there when I can't write,
when the silence in my room
feels like it's waiting for me to speak
and I have nothing to say.

I watch people come and go.
A couple arguing quietly in the corner.
A student asleep over a textbook.
An older man reading the newspaper,
folding it carefully after each page.

I imagine the words he's reading.
Politics. Weather. Obituaries.
I wonder if he translates them too,
into something he can carry.

*
Last week, I called my mother.
She asked if I was eating enough.
I lied and said yes.

She told me it rained all week in Tokyo,
that the hydrangeas are late this year.
Ajisai, she said, the way
she always says it—like a small prayer.

I wanted to tell her
that sometimes I forget
which language I'm thinking in,
that I wake up and don't know
which city I'm in until I see the light.

But instead I said,
Genki da yo. Daijōbu.
I'm fine. I'm okay.

*
Tonight, I stood on my balcony
and watched the city breathe.
Neon signs flickering.
Trains arriving and departing.

Somewhere, someone is writing a poem
about the same skyline.
Somewhere, someone is reading this
and thinking of a different city entirely.

And maybe that's enough—
to be part of this scattered, stitched-together
constellation of almost-homes,
where belonging is something we build
one word at a time.

#poetry #identity #Tokyo #displacement