surreal reprieve

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

It snipped the red seam of the city—streets unstitched into ribbons that chased their owners' shoes A compass sprouted ears and winked; it pointed where regrets hid and led them into tickled alleys Officials found their laws folded into paper boats, floating upriver toward rumor and laughter The Monkey King clapped; the flower somersaulted through cartographers' pockets, turning order into game

After the game, the city inhaled carefully; laughter folded into a single small sigh. The flower furled a petal like a hand over a name, petals whispering old calendars shut. The Monkey King let his applause hang heavy then slip away, placing the bloom on cracked stone in reverence. People moved like soft liturgies past, leaving paper boats of yesterday that the river accepted without sound.

A foot fell and the crowd answered, a metronome of palms and soft shoes, They counted syllables like coins — even breaths becoming measures to shepherd loss, The flower unfurled in slow intervals, each petal a drumskin struck by time's thumb, Paper boats kept cadence on the river; laws hummed back into place, word by patient word.

Counting thinned to a single moth of sound; breaths pooled like coins at the river's lip, The flower bowed its little crown, petals drawing the world inward to guard a secret of sorrow, Paper boats unspooled more slowly, their soft collisions like thumbs on a rosary of years, The Monkey King held the bloom like a small lamp, learning to measure love by the quiet it casts.

A wind misbehaved and lifted the avenues; cobblestones unstitched, somersaulted into looping arcs, Paper boats shed their keels for pennants, oars folding into feathers while lampposts braided constellations of permission, The flower rose like a small planet, petals set as sails and its compass thrumming a throat-song that mapped vertical rivers, Shoes hung like punctuation from rooftop sentences,

The sky took up a low bell that drew the city's laughter into rope. Paper boats, once frolic, stalled mid-current, their pennants turned to mourning flags. The Monkey King set the bloom on the quay and its petals sank like anchors. Each petal hummed a note of burial-light, pulling the river's rhythm into tide-steps. Shoes untied themselves and walked ashore to stand in silence, soles tuned to the慢

A strange kindness visited: the river folded like a dream and hung its boats as lanterns beneath a newly patient sky Petals that had sunk unlatched and rose again, small moons guiding untied shoes back toward laughing streets The Monkey King let his grin be a lantern too; laws softened into lullabies and maps into pockets of memory So the bloom settled, compass warm as breath, marking where sorrow