said the woman’s tote bag in the Tokyo train
on my way to Odaiba. And appropriately,
later on I’m sitting with a bacon burger looking out
the window of a Hawaiian sandwich shop,
admiring the world’s most colorful bridge,
thinking of home. My friends here
must be sick of it: “In my country…
we have a phrase for how we stay silent
and chow for a while when we are hungry
and food has just been served.”
Obscure for envy and homesickness
to get in bed like that. Meanwhile,
the hula music in the restaurant
seems to be singing a thousand unknown words,
all secretly meaning “vacation.”
So I stop writing for a moment
to take a picture already taken
by millions of other tourists. And now,
the bacon burger beckons. So excuse me,
I am hungry and I really just want to eat it.
That’s the best I can say.
