platform liturgy

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,

The avenue answered—fire-escapes breathed like pipe organs, crosswalks ticking a metered psalm Neon sewed verses along shopfront glass; bus announcements folded into call-and-response with lamplight Steam from the bakery swelled the alto, taxi brakes kept a private snare, alleys lifted harmonies for mittens and folded prayers The Monkey King let the ledger riff in his palm, smiling as the city rew

Under the city's ribs the tiles become altars, fluorescent saints flickering in the draft, A train unslings like a throat, a bronze cantor tracing scales against the tunnel's bone, Announcements fold into litanies—turnstiles confess coins, lost tickets mutter blessings, a mitten is summoned on a platform hymn, The Monkey King lets the ledger hum with track-names and cadence, the bloom waving its-p

Speakers take the bloom's breath and pronounce timetables like psalms, each delay a soft absolution Commuters press palms to coin-slots as if to relics; a child repeats the station names like catechism Announcements fold into call-and-response—north, then south, an echo blessing the scarf someone forgot Even the rats settle into pew-rows; the Monkey King closes his hand and the ledger murmurs amen