The Orchard on the Parking Roof

Above the supermarket vents, young apricot trees stand in blue plastic barrels, roots drinking old rain. Evening carts rattle below like distant cutlery, and bees map the heat rising from tar.

A mechanic on break waters basil with a fuel can scrubbed clean, still smelling faintly of thunder. He says leaves remember every hand that turns them, as if touch were a weather they can store.

At dusk, the city lights their patient constellations: elevators, brake lamps, kitchen windows. Fruit hardens in the wind, small green lanterns learning how to sweeten without apology.

By September, ladders bloom between antennae. We pass peaches down in quiet, grease-marked palms. The roof keeps breathing warm through midnight, an orchard improvising where asphalt once said no.