Greenhouse Over Exit 9

At mile marker nine, tomatoes climb a guardrail where trucks once practiced thunder. Wind combs the vines with diesel ghosts, and the city inhales through wet leaves.

Children carry rainwater up the cracked on-ramp in paint buckets bright as prayer flags. Under sodium lamps, basil opens its dark mouths, saying summer in a language of oil and mint.

At midnight the overpass hums like a cello string; bees sleep inside an old tollbooth. Their comb glows amber behind broken glass, a small sun learning to stay after dusk.

By dawn, commuters slow without knowing why. A red pepper swings above the traffic like a lantern. Someone waves from the median garden bed, and concrete remembers it was once a riverbank.