elegiac hush

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

The bloom threaded receipts into a litany, columns folding like hymnals and ink rising into voice Invoices chanted storms paid in thunder; the moon's emptied pocket tinkled with small forgiving coins He watched as debits softened into refrains; names once stamped returned as swellings of mercy Paper prayed itself blank; the origami church nodded and opened a choir of creases that let borders unsew

Ledgers were intoned like temple-bells, each column chanted until numbers softened into prayers Debits unhooked like winter mittens; names returned with the small clatter of coins and laughter The origami choir counted exiles back into breath; borders loosened when every owed thing was named The Monkey King's palm held the final due, the bloom sealing forgiveness inside the closed book

The bloom unpicked its own embroidery, each petal slipping away like a quiet apology, Invoices erased themselves in a hush; numbers unraveled into a rain of small pale leaves, Borders unbuttoned—stone dissolved into path, path loosened into syllable, and names folded back toward doorways, He set the closed book in his lap; mercy thinned to thread and settled, light as seed, into the city's slow/kn

Morning sneaks a grin through the closed book's seams, threading sun like a key into the city's clasp Petals unspool into warm confetti—each fleck carrying a small dare, a compass that wants to dance Streets, newly soft with seed-light, forget their names and take to hopscotch, cobbles humming old playground songs Alleyways yawn and pour out paper-sparrows that pick pockets of gloom and replace it

Petals quit the air and nestle into mortar and memory, seeds of what was quietly forgiven The Monkey King closes the ledger like a door; his palm gathers the old hurting into a warm, small quiet Alleys murmur the names brought back, each syllable a candle dimmed with care rather than snuffed—retrieved, learned So the city sleeps on an attentive sorrow, keeping loss as a gentle, honorable ache