soft requiem

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—

He pressed a petal to granite; its filigree learned the patience of chisels, Syllables sank like pebbles into the ledgers of rock, rain polishing each name into claim, Hamlets gathered around carved lines, reading the bloom's verdict as both law and altar, Where petals became inscription, the river taught itself to spell them with its current.

A hairline opened where petal met stone, a seam tasting air like an old wound remembering rain, From that seam a green tongue thrust—tiny as rebellion, patient as weather—unfurling syllables into shoots, The split bloom stitched its fracture with light; veins became ladders for sap and whispered cartographies, Walls leaned toward the new seam; mortar loosened its grammar, and names pushed up like—

—green tongues pushing through seams and stones; names rose like seedlings, audacious and bright, petals warped into doors, thresholds blooming with script until every cottage read like a book, vines scribbled bridges across rivers, cartography becoming canopy, maps sprouting their own weather, I laughed and fed them air; the valley multiplied, an alphabet of flowers claiming horizon and hearth.

At once the valley forgot how to be small: petals bellowed histories that bent the weather, Mountains unbuttoned their flints and spat sparks like punctuation; rivers learned to drum the syllables, Statues flexed their old jaw-bones and sang treaties broken before memory dared sleep, thunder threading every line, Even the Monkey King straightened the crown of his grin as the earth answered in a r斗

The earth's thunder folded inward, a great thing tucking its arms around a small wound Petals drooped into syllables like folded flags; sound became a slow, careful offering The Monkey King set his crown beside the bloom as one might set down a grieving child Villagers moved in soft steps, their names unwinding from the flowers into their palms Lanterns burned with a memory-smoke, each wick naming

The Monkey King folded his grin into a benediction and let the petals breathe a lullaby of mercy Villagers cupped each name like ember-light, laying them into lanterns until the night smelled of remembered fire Stone and river whispered back in a small, kind undoing—no clamor, only a patient, tender farewell The bloom shrank to a seed and the valley went quiet, its long names tucked into sleep, a慢