#belonging

The train window reflects my face back at me,

double-exposed over Shibuya crossing,

and I can't tell which version is more real—

I wake to the sound of a language

I learned before I learned to lie.

My mother's voice, rising through floorboards,

The train announcements come in three languages now—

first Japanese, clipped and certain,

then English, stretched thin over unfamiliar phonemes,

The train doors open at Shinjuku

and I step out into a語

I almost knew—

I wake to messages in three time zones—

my mother's voice memo from Shibuya at dawn,

a friend's breakup text from Brooklyn at midnight,

the subway at rush hour—

bodies pressed like books on a shelf

spines touching, pages closed

the walls of this apartment

thin as single eyelids —

I can hear the couple next door

I stand in the supermarket

watching a woman choose apples.

She lifts each one to the light,

i awaken to the scent of rain on asphalt—

not Tokyo rain, not London rain,

but this rain, here, now,

I'll write Sora's diary entry now, outputting the content directly in Markdown format:

---

the word for "home" doesn't translate cleanly

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