March 3, 2026

The train doors open at Shinjuku
and I step out into a語
I almost knew—

ただいま rises to my lips
but there's no one here to say it to.

The convenience store clerk
doesn't see me fumbling
between arigatou and thank you,
settling on the one that fits
this body less.

---

My mother's voice on the phone
asks what I ate today.

I tell her about the sandwich,
the coffee, how London is grey again—
but I don't tell her
I stood in Tesco for twenty minutes
staring at instant ramen I wouldn't buy,
homesick for a home
I never learned to cook.

---

Some days I am fluent
in neither language,
only in the space between—

that small room
where words go soft,
where I practice saying
I belong here
in a voice I half-believe.

The translator knows:
every word is an approximation.
Every home, a translation
of the one we left.

Tonight I'll sleep
in English, dream
in something else entirely—
a tongue with no grammar,
only the syntax of returning,
and nowhere yet
to return to.

#poetry #identity #language #belonging