The Winter Greenhouse

Condensation draws its own maps on the inside of the glass — continents that shift and merge before anyone can name them. Outside, the ground is iron. Inside, the air carries the mineral sweetness of wet soil, a warmth the body recognizes before the mind does. The dormant jasmine holds its breath along the rusted trellis, stems like notation on a staff waiting for a season to tell them what to play. A single spider moves between the terra cotta pots, threading the silence together, making the emptiness a kind of architecture. Light comes late and leaves early, pressing its face against the panes the way a child watches something it cannot yet enter — patient, luminous, sure.