Greenhouse of Meteors

At night the greenhouse listens like a vessel, its glass ribs beaded with a cold, private rain. Beyond the panes, meteors unspool their brief threads, and the cucumbers lift their pale hands toward it.

I walk the rows with a jar of phosphorus light, the soil breathing in the small animal way it does. Each leaf keeps a ledger of shadows, each stem a tuned string waiting for wind.

Somewhere a star is breaking into syllables, crisp as sugar on the back teeth of the sky. I think of the old names we gave to weather, and how they kept us from drowning in the vast.

By morning, ash will have settled on the basil, and the greenhouse will smell like iron and green. I will open the door to let the day in, and the plants will pretend they knew it all along.