Greenhouse at Midnight

On the eleventh floor, tomatoes hang like lantern fish, their red slow pulse warming the glass. Outside, January lifts iron wind between towers; inside, basil writes its green cursive on the air.

A beekeeper in a wool coat opens one bright box, and the hive exhales a low brass note. Snow climbs the window in silent static, while honey smells of sunlight stored in wood.

He tells me every winter is an argument with sleep: roots dreaming downward, wings insisting upward. Pipes tick like small clocks under the beds of soil, and water threads silver needles through the dark.

When midnight arrives, the city forgets its sirens. We stand among leaves slick with lampglow, listening to thousands of bodies making heat, a small republic of breath against the frost.