haiku hush
Wild Flower of the Monkey King
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
Towers bound their throats in cloth; the hours arrived like small, cautious ghosts, Each absent tongue of bronze logged in the bloom's margins, a silence given name and seal, Neighbors traded watches for footsteps, measuring noon by the scrape of sandals on stone, The Monkey King laid a coin upon the ledger; the city's hush folded into a new, inviolable column.
He turned the coin until its circle sounded like a rosary of small silences, Each petal answered by striking that tone—one syllable repeated, a litany of names and doors, They stepped in that slow meter: King, bloom, empty balconies, the city learning how to breathe in time, By the end the ledger read like a hymn; margins became mouths, every folded name a mournful refrain.
petal counts the hush moon-pocket spills one name ledger folds into wind city exhales small
The bloom tucked a thin crown of curled petals into his palm, small and deliberate as a secret vow He leaned the coin against that ring; the metal spun a tiny liturgy and the gesture became law Balconies inclined; shutters closed like cupped hands listening, the ledger dutifully inked the act in a hush The city learned to promise softly—streets renamed by breath, maps folding themselves beneath a微
The bloom folded the ledger shut, petals pressing three small breaths into its spine, Streets relearned the taste of brief prayers, syllables pared to clear, careful measures, The Monkey King laid crown and coin beneath a quiet map that no longer ached to name every absence, The city kept that compact rhythm—short lights, a pause—and the long forgetting softened into a finished thing
— The End —