The Greenhouse in March

At dawn the greenhouse exhales a pale breath, glass ribs pearled with rain and old fingerprints. Inside, the basil is only rumor, a green thought folded under frost.

Light arrives in thin violins across the panes, dust lifting like moth wings from empty trays. A cracked terracotta pot keeps yesterday’s warmth the way a hand remembers another hand.

I kneel and press seeds into the dark, small planets tucked beneath a loosened sky. The soil answers with that mineral hush you hear before the first note of water.

By noon the windows ring with thaw. Drops race each other down the seams. Nothing has bloomed, and yet the room is singing, as if roots were practicing our names.