Greenhouse at Low Tide

At dawn the greenhouse unzips its fog, glass ribs beaded with small moons of water. Tomato vines lift their wrists toward the east, as if taking pulse from a hidden sea.

Below, the avenue drags its salt and sirens, buses breathing clouds against the curb. Inside, basil bruises the air to sweetness, and bees stitch gold thread through the humming heat.

I rinse a cracked teacup under the spigot, watch rust swirl out like old weather maps. A pigeon lands, boots of rain on the skylight, then leaves one silver feather in the gutter.

By noon the roof is a bright, floating orchard, roots drinking from barrels of captured storm. Everything here survives by borrowed water, and still it sings, leaf after leaf, into light.