Atlas of the Closed Greenhouse

The greenhouse sleeps with its ribs of glass, beaded by a winter that learned to hesitate. Inside, the air is a page left blank, waiting for a hand that never returns.

A ladder leans like a tired verb, its steps dusted with the pollen of years. I read the labels of dead pots, each a small alphabet of failed light.

Somewhere, a drip keeps time in a tin pail, a metronome for the slow undoing of green. Vines have written their own cursive on the frame, soft ink of tendril and rust.

When I leave, my breath fogs the door, a temporary map that fades before I finish it. Outside, the field reclaims its weather, and the glass remembers nothing at all.