Lantern Lanes
(Vietnam)
My pencil woke up glowing today.
“Let’s chase the light,” it said.
So I followed—
and found myself in Hanoi.
The page filled with lanterns,
red, gold, and jade,
floating like tiny suns over the street.
The pencil danced between them,
drawing ribbons of laughter and wind.
Then it paused to whisper a secret:
In Hanoi’s Old Quarter,
there’s a train that runs so close to the houses
you could almost reach out and touch it.
I drew that too—
a train brushing past laundry lines,
its whistle blending with dinner smells and chatter.
By the time I signed the page,
the lanterns had spilled off the paper,
glowing softly on my desk.
The pencil just smiled,
as if it had borrowed a bit of Hanoi’s heart.
✨ If your pencil could follow the light, where would it lead you tonight?