In Tokyo the streets are nameless.

No signposts nor obvious direction.

One simply wanders until familiarity sets in.

Schools of Japanese school-girls,

black-skirted, their muscled legs slipped into Hello Kitty shoes;

they know where to go.

Here, everything is plastic, neon.

The days are lit with stalls of pastel goods, so delicate, frail;

unfolding branches of hanging flowers, a sailor dress in shades of lavender & peach.

All smell of newness, of Play-Doh.

Nights are given over to the neon

tubes of color, unreadable, float above wide avenues

while great projection screens above the crosswalk, dinosaurs roam

and hidden-pole cameras display pictures of the crowd.

It is then I see myself.

My poppy red umbrella, unmistakable blonde hair,

bright in a sea of shiny black, I am embarrassed

by such obvious otherness.

It was then, at that crosswalk,

that I knew what it meant

to be Charlotte –

to be lost in translation.

I thought I knew of her loneliness.

What it meant to be as one, yet curiously estranged.

Later, sounds of city hushed by height and the double-paned windows.

I stand before the mirror, try a new glossy lipstick

full-pouted, disheveled, I felt the great absence of everything.

Knew then, as she said, that I too was stuck.