Greenhouse at Perigee

At midnight the station tilts its glass ribcage toward Earth, and lettuce leaves drift like small hands learning to wave. Below us, continents turn their dark sleeves inside out, city lights bead the coast like spilled seed.

I clip basil in slow motion; each cut rings once in my wrist. Water lifts itself into silver marbles, then breaks on my thumb. Somewhere over the Pacific, thunder writes without ink, and lightning opens, closes, like a camera in sleep.

We are told roots need gravity, a downward promise. Instead they braid around mesh, patient as braided hair. The fan hum keeps time for our two heartbeats and the pumps; night has no floor here, only a careful orbit.

At dawn, Earth rises green and bruised and astonishing. I press my face to the pane and smell chlorophyll from home. In this small garden turning above weather and war, new leaves uncurl toward a sun they cannot touch.