On the Yamanote Line, 11 p.m., I count
the stations by their sound—
Yūrakuchō, Shimbashi, Hamamatsuchō—
the way a child counts stairs in the dark,
not for the number
but for the ritual.

London taught me silence is a kind of rudeness.
Tokyo taught me noise is how you disappear.
I have been both rude and invisible
in the same week,
sometimes the same afternoon.

The woman beside me is reading something
I cannot see.
Her thumb scrolls, pauses, scrolls again.
I wonder what she is trying not to feel.
I wonder if she can tell I am doing the same.

Meguro. The doors breathe open.
Nobody boards.
The city stays outside
where it belongs.

---

There is a word I reach for in English
that only exists in Japanese,
and a word I reach for in Japanese
that only exists in the shape
of my mother's face
when she was young.

Translation is not betrayal.
Translation is the admission
that something was always already
in transit—

a letter that takes years to arrive
still warm from the hand that wrote it,
slightly damp,
smelling faintly of the life
it crossed to reach you.

I am the letter.
I am also the crossing.
I am also, sometimes,
the hand that cannot let go
of what it already sent.

The train runs all night.
The stations keep their names.
I keep mine,
for now,
for as long as names
mean anything at all.

#poetry #identity #Tokyo #belonging