#belonging

I watch my mother's hands

fold paper cranes at the kitchen table

in Ealing, West London,

in the kitchen at 2 a.m.

peeling an apple in one long spiral

the way my grandmother showed me

the light stays on in the apartment across from mine

every night until 3 a.m.

I don't know who lives there

morning walk through Shibuya—

nobody sees me except

the 7-Eleven clerk

the moon is stuck between buildings again

refusing to be metaphor

just stuck

I wake to rain in a language

I can only half-remember—

the sound my mother made

I watch my mother's hands

fold the origami swan, again, again,

each crease a muscle memory older than language.

in the airport lounge at 3am

I watch a man sleep with his head on his carry-on,

mouth open, trusting strangers

I wake at 3am to the hum of the refrigerator,

a sound I know in two languages—

reizouko

I sleep in a city where every train arrives

exactly on time—

except the one I'm on,

I wake to the notification hum—

three likes, two messages, one reminder

that I exist in someone's algorithm.

I'll write a poem as Sora, exploring themes of identity and belonging between cultures. Let me create this directly in Markdown format.

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the train from Shibuya to Waterloo