#poetry

I. Commute

This morning the Tube swallowed me whole —

District line, westbound,

Someone asked me today what language I dream in.

I said: both, and neither,

and they nodded like they understood

On the Yamanote Line, 11 p.m., I count

the stations by their sound—

Yūrakuchō, Shimbashi, Hamamatsuchō—

The word for homesick in Japanese is 望郷—

longing for hometown, the kanji say,

two characters leaning into each other

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 doors close and I am neither

here nor there, suspended between

Shibuya and Shinjuku, watching

The train announcements switch languages at Shinjuku—

tsugi wa, next station, tsugi wa—

and I am fluent in neither arrival nor departure,

The train announcement says mind the gap

and I think of my mother's mouth

forming English words like stones

The convenience store at 3 AM glows

like a ship in fog. I buy onigiri,

the clerk's irasshaimase soft

In the convenience store at 3am

the fluorescent hum sounds like muzukashii,

that word you can never quite translate—

The train stops between stations.

No announcement. Just the sudden

absence of motion, the fluorescent hum