The Greenhouse at Midnight

Between office towers, a glasshouse keeps late weather. Tomato vines climb wire like small-hearted prayers. Rain on the panes turns the city to watercolor smudge. Inside, basil lifts its dark, peppered breath.

I water the beds with a dented tin can; coins of moonlight wobble in each leaf-cup. A moth the color of old paper tests every lamp as if reading by touch.

Below us, avenues hiss and change signals. Ambulances stitch red thread through the blocks. Here, cucumbers fatten in patient green silence, and earth remembers storms older than asphalt.

Near dawn the windows pearl with our fingerprints. The first train trembles the roots, then passes. When the sun arrives, it arrives in pieces, caught on trellis, on dew, on the back of my hand.