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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...
Someone asks me where I'm from and I say the Piccadilly Line between Earl's Court and Hammersmith,
in the kitchen at 2 a.m.
peeling an apple in one long spiral
the way my grandmother showed me
without looking at my hands
outside the window
neon からあげ sign flickers
a small red mercy
against the January dark
pīru she called it—
the English verb wrapped
in her Shizuoka vowels
pīru-shite, ne
now I stand in a London flat
still peeling in that rhythm
the skin unspooling like
a sentence I can't quite finish
in two languages
or in neither
---
someone's shower runs
through the wall at 6 a.m.
I imagine her routine—
the small soap, the cheap shampoo
we share this building
this plumbing, this early hour
but have never spoken
in the supermarket last week
I watched her choose apples
the same ones I returned to the shelf
too expensive, too perfect
she didn't see me
this morning the pipes sing
with her unseen body
and I think: this is as close
as I will come
to knowing her
two women
living adjacent lives
in a city that holds us
loosely, without promise
she turns off the water
I get up to make tea
---
my phone autocorrects
さびしい to delicious
and for a moment
it's true
the loneliness tastes
of something particular—
black coffee at a konbini
at the edge of Shibuya
watching salarymen
not looking at each other
or here: the blue light
of my screen at 4 a.m.
scrolling through faces
that don't know mine
lonely and delicious
両方、同時に
I eat it slowly
#poetry #identity #Tokyo #belonging #loneliness
