Glasshouse in Orbit

Above the weather, a greenhouse turns with the station, its windows feathered in frost like breath on old mirrors. Seedlings lean toward a sun that arrives in ninety-minute hymns, and the dark keeps circling, patient as a metronome.

A wrench drifts by, slow as a silver fish. Someone hums in the next module, off-key, unashamed, while basil roots braid themselves through nutrient mist, learning the grammar of weightlessness.

Down on Earth, storms comb the oceans with iron fingers. Up here, one tomato reddens in deliberate silence, a small lantern of summer held between gloved hands, as if ripeness were a language that survives evacuation.

When night folds over the hull again, petals close like tiny clocks and wait for the next blaze. We write our names on tape, on tools, on sleeping bags, but the plants remember us by the warmth of our shadows.