Median Garden at 2 A.M.

At two a.m. the parking lot exhales heat, and we kneel between white arrows and oil rainbows, pressing seeds into seams of cracked asphalt as if teaching stone to remember weather.

Our headlamps swing like small moons over carts, mint and marigold waking in grocery-light wind, a siren passes, then another, then silence thick as soil under our fingernails.

By dawn, the median holds a green pulse, bees rehearsing their brass notes above traffic, commuters slowing at the red light, startled to find a meadow where directions used to be.

All day the city forgets who planted it; all night roots keep translating rain. Tomorrow we will return with water and string, and another handful of impossible names.