#language

The word for

homesick

in Japanese is

Someone asks me where I'm from

and I say the Piccadilly Line

between Earl's Court and Hammersmith,

The train doors close before I finish

the sentence I was forming in my head—

English or Japanese, I can't remember which.

The train announcement says

mind the gap

and I think of my mother's mouth

The convenience store at 3 AM glows

like a ship in fog. I buy onigiri,

the clerk's

At the konbini at 3am, fluorescent light

makes everyone look like they're underwater.

The clerk says

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 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.

I sleep in a city where every train arrives

exactly on time—

except the one I'm on,