calligram mischief
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
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,
They coil into cursive ferrets, slipping between cobbles to sketch cartoons on shopfront glass Ink-tails curl into parentheses that hug a lamppost's new hat; verbs hop like sparrows from sign to sign The Monkey King traces a finger through a looping sentence and the street reads it back in giggle-traffic City ordinances reduce to sticky jokes; the bloom blinks, a nib of mischief bright as a pocket
Letters fold into cheeky pictures, doodling mustaches on lamppost saints and paper boats in gutters The bloom's penmanship pirouettes into playful signs—maps that giggle, footnotes that untie grudges The Monkey King slips the last mischievous stroke into his sleeve; the city reads its own handwriting and forgives the rain Petals dim to quiet stitches in pavement; the ledger closes like a palm, crè
— The End —