Night Shift on the Grocery Roof

At midnight the grocery roof exhales warmth, tomatoes glow like low planets in plastic sleeves, rainwater ticks along the gutters in silver Morse, and the city keeps its teeth of neon bared.

Between vents, basil lifts its dark green hands, steam drifts up from the bakery below, a bus sighs at the corner, doors opening as if the street were taking one careful breath.

Pigeons sleep in the alphabet of antennas, their feathers folded around small furnaces of heart. I move among crates, harvesting light from leaves, my knife bright as a thin moon in a puddle.

By dawn the east window turns to apricot glass. Workers arrive with coffee and tired laughter. We pass each box down, warm with hidden weather, and morning tastes of chlorophyll, bread, and rain.