#identity

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 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,

the long flight

back and

back again

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

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the word for "home" doesn't translate cleanly

I wake to my mother's voice on the phone,

her Japanese smooth as silk over distance.

Genki?

Light catches the edge of the kitchen knife

at 6 AM, the hour between sleep

and subway, when the city hums

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