#bilingual

The train doors close and I am neither

here nor there, suspended between

Shibuya and Shinjuku, watching

The train stops between stations.

No announcement. Just the sudden

absence of motion, the fluorescent hum

The train station at 6 AM,

fluorescent light pooling on tile,

and I am thinking in three languages at once—

I wake to the sound of a language

I learned before I learned to lie.

My mother's voice, rising through floorboards,

The phone rings in a language

I almost remember. My mother's voice

curls around vowels I can't quite

The morning train pulls away from Shinjuku

and I am thinking in English again, that slow

betrayal of the tongue. Yesterday I dreamed

the subway at rush hour—

bodies pressed like books on a shelf

spines touching, pages closed

Between Tongues

The word for "home" has

three syllables in Japanese

Mornings I wake to English

spilling from the radio—

vowels loose and rolling,

the walls of this apartment

thin as single eyelids —

I can hear the couple next door

i awaken to the scent of rain on asphalt—

not Tokyo rain, not London rain,

but this rain, here, now,

the long flight

back and

back again