The Observatory Becomes a Garden

The dome unlatches like a slow eyelid, brass gears stiff with sea-air and forgotten prayers. I step into the round room; sunlight spills through a slit in the roof, a pale, precise river.

We plant tomatoes in the chalked constellation map, their vines tracing Orion's belt across the floor. The old telescope, a sleeping whale, holds rain in its mouth, then lets it drip.

At dusk the city hums below like a hive. Stars arrive, shy insects, to the open eye. I read the sky with dirty hands, compost under my nails, orbit in my breath.