Rooftop Greenhouse at 3 A.M.

At three a.m. the city loosens its collar, steam lifts from subway grates like tired horses, and above the sirens a greenhouse of glass holds one square of weather no forecast can name.

Basil bruises the dark with pepper and rain, tomato vines climb strings like careful handwriting, my flashlight moves through leaves, a pale moon on loan, finding small green fists of fruit still learning red.

Below, office towers blink in sleepless code, elevators rise and fall like deep breaths in metal lungs; up here, one moth taps the pane again and again, certain the lamp is a door.

By dawn, the east windows milk over, I carry a crate of mint down twelve flights, and the stairwell smells briefly of summer riverbanks— proof that even concrete can remember soil.