Signal Garden

At midnight the empty lot begins to hum, rebar lifting its wet shoulders out of mud, old rain cupped in tire ruts reflecting constellations, a grammar of broken glass learning to shine.

A freight train passes and the ground remembers thunder; windows up the block flicker like slow fish, and somewhere a vending machine exhales blue, tossing its small aurora across the weeds.

From the chain-link fence, green sparks climb, ivy threading itself through rusted squares, each leaf a soft battery storing moonlight, each tendril rewriting the shape of the wall.

By dawn, cranes arrive in orange vests of fire, but even their engines pause before the brightness: a garden of signals blooming from scrap, metal, rain, and the patient pulse of night.