Night Shift at the Greenhouse

At midnight the greenhouse inhales the city, condensation pearls on the ribs of glass, tomato vines lift their wrists to sodium light, and moths write soft equations above the basil.

Outside, buses exhale at empty stops, inside, a bucket catches rain from a cracked seam. Each drop strikes metal like a tuning fork, teaching the leaves a slow, copper hymn.

I prune by headlamp, hands smelling of stem and iron; the peppers glow like lanterns under skin. Somewhere a train bends the dark into a long violin, and the soil answers with warm, black breath.

By dawn the windows pale to milk. Pigeons land, ordinary as receipts. I lock the door and carry one ripe fig home, a small red heart still beating in my pocket.