Tokyo

I walked into Tokyo like a warning—

a whisper cut from neon.

Everything here breathes in silence,

but it's not quiet.

The vending machines blink like gods.

Subways hum like suppressed emotions.

A thousand suits move in synchrony,

as if desire is scheduled.

I watched lovers hold hands

like contracts,

not kisses.

Cherry blossoms fell like forgotten prayers—

a softness that dared exist

in a city of edges.

Their petals stuck to my shoes,

as if asking me to stay

where I never belonged.

In a ramen shop at 2 AM,

I met a man who said nothing.

His silence undressed me quicker

than any mouth ever did.

There were samurai in my blood—

or so I pretended,

walking narrow alleyways with a blade of memory

strapped to my spine.

Tokyo doesn't ask questions,

it gives you options:

    button A for solitude,

    button B for a soft drink,

    button C for a night

    you'll lie about.

No city has ever felt so polite

about breaking me.

I lit a cigarette I don’t smoke

outside a karaoke bar

just to feel like I belonged to someone’s version

of loneliness.

There are shrines that hum with old ghosts,

and skyscrapers that blink like new gods.

I bowed to both,

and neither noticed.

In Shinjuku, I became a ghost

with perfect eyebrows

and the wrong name.

I whispered lies in bathrooms

just to feel fluent.

Tokyo taught me:

not all cities want you to heal.

Some just want to dress your wounds

in chrome and techno

and let you dance until forgetting

feels like identity.

I bought a love hotel room

for myself.

Put on lipstick,

crossed my legs,

called it becoming.

Somewhere between vending machine coffee

and midnight trains,

I realized:

I don’t miss people.

I miss places

where I could be someone else.

Tokyo was never mine.

But for one night,

it let me rent a version

of who I needed to be.

And isn’t that

what love is

sometimes?