elegiac hush

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

So the bloom began to pare the ledgers into three-breath prayers, each entry a small sky pocketed moon emptied river holds a child's name until morning opens its palm origami church bows

A thin frost hems the bloom's edges, each petal folding like a closed shop window Its ledger exhales white filaments into the lane, listing which doors may dream through winter The Monkey King tucks his laughter under a down coat and listens as leaves file away their names The flower files the year like a receipt, stamping every memory with a patient, polite forgetting

Frost at the bloom's rim loosens; crystals slide like small coins into a bright seam The ledger exhales warm mist—ink bleeds back toward names as if remembering how to hold them The Monkey King cups that steam and laughs; city-doors sigh open, their cobblestones hum soft returns Petals unfurl like waiting hands, each receipt melting into a slow, careful yes

Ink runs like a slow confession from petal-veins, pooling at the Monkey King's boots The letters curl into bridges, calligraphic arcs spanning alleys and old rumors Shopfronts take up cursive, signing their debts of laughter and sending receipts back to noon A lamplighter reads the margin and finds a child's name stitched into the bulb's filament The bloom drains syllables that become small bells,

Bells soften to moths, folding their wings into the pockets of the street. Ledger pages close like old mouths; names are exhaled into gutters as single offered syllables. The Monkey King lays his palm over the bloom and counts a small, deliberate inventory of goodbyes. Petals button shut, keeping only what must remain: proofs, a husk of song, one steady yes.