In the convenience store at 3am

the fluorescent hum sounds like muzukashii,
that word you can never quite translate—
difficult, yes, but also
the specific ache of trying.

The clerk doesn't look up.
I am grateful for this.

In London, my mother's voice on the phone
asks if I'm eating enough vegetables.
In Tokyo, my father sends
a photograph of cherry blossoms
three weeks before they bloom.

I send back a photograph of rain
on a bus window. He doesn't reply.

This is also a kind of conversation.

---

Translation Exercise No. 47

The client wants warmth rendered as 温もり
but the source text means heat,
the uncomfortable kind, the kind
that makes you peel off your coat
on the Central line in August,
press your face to the window,
wish you were anywhere else.

I write 温もり anyway.
Some lies are tender.

---

Insomnia Fugue

I have been explaining myself in two languages
for so long I've forgotten which one
I dream in, if I dream at all—

last night I woke at 4:17
to the sound of a fox screaming
or a distant train
or my own breath
learning to take up less space.

The body knows no grammar.
It just is, dumb animal,
wanting water, wanting touch,
wanting the morning to arrive
speaking a language
even I can understand.

But morning comes bilingual,
light spilling through the window
in particles and waves,
refusing to choose.

So I make tea. I don't make tea.
I stand in the kitchen between both acts,
a woman-shaped silence,
fluent in neither here nor there.

The kettle boils.
I let it.

#poetry #identity #belonging #displacement