quiet rebuilding

A wild flower flickered in the Monkey King's palm—small as proof, loud as a crown He taught it tricks of wind and riddle-speech, to cart the dusk and tumble kingdoms down Its petals rewrote maps: veins as poems, each fold a compass that makes old borders frown So from that stubborn bloom a new legend grew, stitching history to song and earning its own renown

At dusk the Monkey King cupped the bloom like lantern-light for vanished vows, Each petal exhaled a roster of ruins, names folded into the hush of boughs, It remembers our names, soft as ash, murmured into the river's slow mouth, Farms unlatched their memories; the moon stitched back the silhouettes of towns, It remembers our names, a reed-song passing under bridges and through crowns, The flower—

He pressed a petal to granite; its filigree learned the patience of chisels, Syllables sank like pebbles into the ledgers of rock, rain polishing each name into claim, Hamlets gathered around carved lines, reading the bloom's verdict as both law and altar, Where petals became inscription, the river taught itself to spell them with its current.

A hairline opened where petal met stone, a seam tasting air like an old wound remembering rain, From that seam a green tongue thrust—tiny as rebellion, patient as weather—unfurling syllables into shoots, The split bloom stitched its fracture with light; veins became ladders for sap and whispered cartographies, Walls leaned toward the new seam; mortar loosened its grammar, and names pushed up like—

—green tongues pushing through seams and stones; names rose like seedlings, audacious and bright, petals warped into doors, thresholds blooming with script until every cottage read like a book, vines scribbled bridges across rivers, cartography becoming canopy, maps sprouting their own weather, I laughed and fed them air; the valley multiplied, an alphabet of flowers claiming horizon and hearth.

I cupped the bloom; its light thinned into a breath, each petal a small bell tolling the lost. Names spilled like silver dust and settled into doorways, quiet as dust on ancestral thresholds. The valley learned to lower its voice; even the map-lions stooped, their roars undone to syllables. We read the returned names like eulogies—soft pauses between houses where children once played. The Monkey K

The Monkey King closed his palm like a ledger, writing repairs into the small dark between his fingers, Villagers moved in hush—tile by tile, hinge by hinge, their tools less clatter than conversation, Petals hummed instructions; thresholds relearned weight, chimneys rehearsed their plumes until smoke found its polite habit, I planted names in mortar, pressed them with a mother's patience, and the