elegiac drift

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

At dusk the Monkey King cupped the bloom like lantern-light for vanished vows, Each petal exhaled a roster of ruins, names folded into the hush of boughs, It remembers our names, soft as ash, murmured into the river's slow mouth, Farms unlatched their memories; the moon stitched back the silhouettes of towns, It remembers our names, a reed-song passing under bridges and through crowns, The flower—

The flower exhaled a low, rocking hush that braided night into a mother's coil, Petals unspooled lull and ledger both, naming hearths until the smoke forgot its hurry, Lanterns bobbed like slow-heart answers; each name folded into the palm of sleep, The Monkey King's thumb kept the beat, patient as moon-breath, coaxing cities soft and small.

A petal unbuttoned like a pocket into another city, where afternoon walked upside down, Small moons hawked time in paper cups and teaspoons traded the names of lonely shutters, Lanterns grew legs and spilled their light into coat-pockets; bridges hummed with combed glass, The Monkey King grinned and folded constellations like maps, tucking rooftops into the bloom.

He turned a petal like a page and spoke the names low, each one a small undoing The city bent inward — shutters feathered shut, dogs folded their bodies into the earth Lanterns kept the beat of something like mourning; even the moon swallowed its loudness The bloom held the last syllables like prayers, and the river carried them away like softened coins

A petal falls: small as a stone into dusk. Names make a single ring, then settle into glass. Night counts three tiny breaths, each one a folded bell. The Monkey King keeps the silence like a held-back laugh.

The petal cleaves open like a pocket theatre, and a city of knucklebones steps out applauding the moon, Lanterns sprout ankles and wander into alleys where shutters fold themselves into paper boats that read aloud old names, The Monkey King plucks a syllable and it unrolls into a ribbon of birds that sew windowpanes to river-light, Houses rearrange into improbable instruments; night plays them in,

Lanterns fold their hymn into pocketed dark; streets exhale like old pages shut, Names, one by patient one, sink to the riverbed — small offerings, soft metallic and necessary, The Monkey King holds the bloom like a promise used up and kept, his grin a slow unmaking that blesses what must leave, By dawn there are only seeds and the hush they teach — a luminous forgetfulness that ferries the last,淡