Laughing has no passport,
no border guard,
no grammar test at the gate.
It spills out
untranslated,
unbothered by syllables
or the weight of where you’re from.
A burst,
a crack in the serious surface of things,
like light sneaking through shutters
in a room that forgot morning.
Your laugh doesn’t carry your history
the way your words do.
It doesn’t stumble on r’s
or soften its t’s
to make itself understood.
It just arrives
bright, sudden,
a shared language with no alphabet.
In a crowded train,
in a quiet kitchen,
in the space between strangers
who will never learn each other’s names
laughter recognises itself.
It says:
I know you.
Not where you’re from,
not what you’ve survived,
but this….
this moment of being undone
by something small and human.
And for a second,
the world forgets its divisions,
because joy doesn’t need translation,
and laughter
has never had an accent.
JH