Greenhouse in Orbit

At dawn the station turns its glass shoulder to Earth, and basil leaves lift like small hands in slow water. Below, continents unroll their weathered maps, blue storms stitched with lightning thread.

I prune the vines while cities flare and dim, traffic veins pulsing through the midnight crust. Each clipped tendril drifts, a bright comma, pausing the sentence of gravity.

Roots drink from a silver breath of mist; tomatoes swell, red moons with skin-thin glow. When I split one open, summer spills out, seed-bright, warm as a remembered kitchen.

By the next orbit, frost ghosts the outer panels, and Earth is a lantern carried through dark wheat. Inside, one flower opens without witnesses, teaching the vacuum how to listen.