The Greenhouse After Midnight

The town exhales; streetlights dim like tired fireflies, and the greenhouse keeps a small private weather, its panes breathing fog in slow syllables, its metal bones cooled to a listening hush.

Inside, leaves are hands rehearsing a different grammar, each vein a map of rain that never arrived. A fan turns, a soft wheel of wind, and orchids lift their faces into the dark.

Somewhere beyond the glass, a radio murmurs to itself, a thin thread of voices stitching up the cold. I stand between the sleepers and the seedlings, a caretaker of light, a visitor to chlorophyll dreams.

By morning the frost will be a ghost on the grass, and the sun will coin new silence on the roof. For now the damp air tastes of copper and patience, and growth makes a sound like distant rain.