#identity

At the konbini at 3am, fluorescent light

makes everyone look like they're underwater.

The clerk says

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 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

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