Ghazal for a Disappearing Hutong

I’m 13 & holding your hand through the market tonight—
neon lanterns flickering into bitesize stars of light.

In the hutong’s hush, laundry ghosts in the memory
of sun-licked wind, white sleeves blurring into light.

The alleys, paved smooth now, swallow your voice
as you whisper: here was the ginkgo tree, our light.

We walk past windows gone dark, once filled by families
sticky as sugar, craving that sweetness like light.

Each morning, you woke to Yéye brushing his teeth—
to clattering bowls of red bean soup still warm with light.

Back then, you say, there wasn’t mine or yours. Each backyard
stitched together beneath one spiderweb of moonlight.

Later, you tell me your neighbor made the soup. Every time
you knocked for more, she smiled, ladling light

spoonfuls of sweetness into your bowl. Now, vendors
sell postcards of that street, each one waiting for light.

Where hutong weddings once blossomed between
courtyards, plastic souvenir shops shimmer in the sunlight.

While waiting for our glossed tanghulus, I trace Yinding Bridge
with my finger, each ridge pressing through the stone’s mouth of light.

Silence, as we eat—the willow trees leaning in closer, their roots
tangled in the dappled reflection of your memory’s murky light.

You lift your phone to capture the lake’s reflection—
but the photo shows only tourists multiplying like light.

Your story still burns quietly within you—and now within me.
Evening folds it quietly into the horizon’s thinning light.