solemn unmaking

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

The bloom began to inventory the impossible: receipts for storms, a ledger of vanished streets and small apologies It listed a moon with pockets, a compass that read which childhood you'd be tomorrow, a church spattered in origami birds Rivers were filed under "waiting," mountains cataloged by the taste of their shadows, borders stamped with lullaby signatures The Monkey King watched the list sign

The ledger swelled into a directory of losses, each entry a bell sunk in tissue and paper, It named a dock that forgot nightly arguments, a bakery whose ovens cooled with someone's name, a bridge that grew mute, Petals folded over the margins like fingers pressing a pulse that refuses to stop, At each entry the bloom let fall the same quiet: we remember The Monkey King bowed his shadow to the page

Towers bound their throats in cloth; the hours arrived like small, cautious ghosts, Each absent tongue of bronze logged in the bloom's margins, a silence given name and seal, Neighbors traded watches for footsteps, measuring noon by the scrape of sandals on stone, The Monkey King laid a coin upon the ledger; the city's hush folded into a new, inviolable column.

He turned the coin until its circle sounded like a rosary of small silences, Each petal answered by striking that tone—one syllable repeated, a litany of names and doors, They stepped in that slow meter: King, bloom, empty balconies, the city learning how to breathe in time, By the end the ledger read like a hymn; margins became mouths, every folded name a mournful refrain.

The ledger hiccups and the bloom begins to juggle its pages—names spill like marbles, each syllable a tossed dare Petals crease into paper boats that whistle the city's past in nonsense rhymes; alleys answer with kite-throated claps Coins rattle into a drumbeat of winked-up histories; balconies cough confetti and the missing tongues return speaking riddles The Monkey King laughs, soft as a bell, t

The Monkey King's laugh thinned to a single loose thread; the bloom folded its petals like lids over small fires Pages unspooled themselves—ink lifting in slow apology; names slipped out of margins and drifted, unclaimed Bridges let go their centerboards, lamps returned tiny suns into palms, balconies unclasped their letters The ledger shut without a hand; the city eased through the seams it had b