Greenhouse at Low Orbit

The station turns like a slow thought in winter, windows beaded with frost the color of old coins. Inside, the greenhouse exhales a damp warmth, ferns unfurling their small, planetary fists.

We harvest light in sheets, fold it into trays, listen for the hush of pumps, the patient drip. Tomato vines thread their soft green cables between the brass ribs and the star-salt dust.

No wind here, only the rotation’s faint pull, a gravity borrowed, a lullaby in mathematics. We pin photos to the bulkhead—rivers, doorways— let them yellow under a sun that never sets.

Some nights the orbit skirts a storm-lit ocean and the glass glows blue like a held breath. We press our palms to the panes, and the leaves press back, as if remembering our names.