life is a garden ➿ and the roots are all touching
涙そうそう 🎼 nada soso (tears for you)
today my eyes felt like stones. i couldnt figure out what the hell i was even sad about.
✰
it felt like a mirage, maybe a phantom. sitting at prospect park, i saw a brother and sister who i immediately recognized as japanese. i saw their mother, wearing a comically large sunvisor and arm protector gloves. perfect evidence.
the brother ran about with a plastic bug cage and a net with a long stick. this toolkit mirrored the same one i had to catch rhino beetles during my summers in japan. the sister calmly sat and nodded as the boy spoke excitedly, waving the net with conviction. i stared and stared and stared. i made drawings of them over and over and over again. she looked just like me. he looked just like me. what were they doing here? when did they arrive in new york? were they really real?
i walked towards the algae infested water and listened to nada soso. i inititally couldn’t even rememember the actual title of the song, googling lyrics with my unpracticed japanese, the lyrics burned into my memory via years of karaoke. the uncharacteristic seventy-three degree august day made me placeless. maybe i always felt that way, for as long as i’ve been. belonging is a funny thing. i don’t know where i am sometimes, even if i’ve been here dozens of times before.
i closely inspected the siblings, feeling like they might evaporate if i looked too hard. family. bug net. dressing funny because you’re japanese, japanese people dressing kind of funny, and i can say that because i am japanese. feeling funny because i am japanese in not-japan. feeling funny because i am not-japanese in japan. this weather is weird. i can’t remember the last time i tried to catch a bug in earnest, for fun.
✰
i have a passing thought about my grandmother in the almost-dim private karaoke room we always went to, singing her favorite rotation of songs that remained the same in all of our shared years. she was so beautiful when she held a mic. my family loves singing. i love singing. we did it so much together when my grandmother was still here. there has been a little less of it in recent years.
heaven is a karaoke room with muffled sounds of her singing all her favorite songs. my eyes soften, drifting off to a little nap. nada soso.
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last edited 8/21/25
today my eyes felt like stones. i couldnt figure out what the hell i was even sad about.
✰
it felt like a mirage, maybe a phantom. sitting at prospect park, i saw a brother and sister who i immediately recognized as japanese. i saw their mother, wearing a comically large sunvisor and arm protector gloves. perfect evidence.
the brother ran about with a plastic bug cage and a net with a long stick. this toolkit mirrored the same one i had to catch rhino beetles during my summers in japan. the sister calmly sat and nodded as the boy spoke excitedly, waving the net with conviction. i stared and stared and stared. i made drawings of them over and over and over again. she looked just like me. he looked just like me. what were they doing here? when did they arrive in new york? were they really real?
i walked towards the algae infested water and listened to nada soso. i inititally couldn’t even rememember the actual title of the song, googling lyrics with my unpracticed japanese, the lyrics burned into my memory via years of karaoke. the uncharacteristic seventy-three degree august day made me placeless. maybe i always felt that way, for as long as i’ve been. belonging is a funny thing. i don’t know where i am sometimes, even if i’ve been here dozens of times before.
i closely inspected the siblings, feeling like they might evaporate if i looked too hard. family. bug net. dressing funny because you’re japanese, japanese people dressing kind of funny, and i can say that because i am japanese. feeling funny because i am japanese in not-japan. feeling funny because i am not-japanese in japan. this weather is weird. i can’t remember the last time i tried to catch a bug in earnest, for fun.
✰
i have a passing thought about my grandmother in the almost-dim private karaoke room we always went to, singing her favorite rotation of songs that remained the same in all of our shared years. she was so beautiful when she held a mic. my family loves singing. i love singing. we did it so much together when my grandmother was still here. there has been a little less of it in recent years.
heaven is a karaoke room with muffled sounds of her singing all her favorite songs. my eyes soften, drifting off to a little nap. nada soso.
last edited 8/21/25