liquid cartography

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

Petals opened like small shutters; the bloom exhaled ember-names and the ovens remembered how to sing A ferry's line tugged the ledger and came ashore: a bell coughed its greeting, a rope found its old hand Marbles and matches, folded prayers and a single lost mitten slipped back into pockets and doorways as if forgiven The Monkey King cupped each return without trumpet—these were tiny recoveries,

He cradles the bloom; it names what came home in a voice like a hand settling a child to sleep Petals fold into soft refrains that stitch pockets back onto coats and coax a sleeping lamp to glow A shoe returns in slow ceremony, a note slides into its envelope, the city answers in hushed, steady breath The ledger shuts a page like a door; everything that came back moves gentle as forgiven footsteps

The bloom exhales a language of tides; lampposts sprout small harbors and sail into gutters Streets unhook themselves like shoelaces and drift east, humming the names they used to wear A clock folds into a paper bird that migrates through alleys with postage-stamp suns The Monkey King tilts his palm and the ledger swims, pages becoming paperboats of careful ghosts Windows yawn like mouths, passing

Ink pools at windowsills and decides, softly, to become currents Alleys unbutton themselves into rivers; house numbers drift like small barges The bloom exhales a tide-map, each petal an estuary of directions Compasses stop pointing north and learn to read the undertow of memory Fountains notarize neighborhoods; puddles file deeds with tiny, looping signatures The Monkey King lets the ledger liquy