Inventory of the Borrowed Kitchen

The landlord's spoons are shallow as apologies. I eat soup from them anyway, slowly, the way you learn a stranger's name by repeating it until it softens.

A kettle with no whistle. A clock that keeps time for someone else's morning. I open drawers and meet the ghosts of other hands — their grooves, their oils, the knife that knows a different onion.

Outside, the plum tree I did not plant drops its small, bruised arguments against the window. I count them. I pretend they are sent to me.

At night the refrigerator hums a lullaby it learned from no one, and I fold into the borrowed sheets like a letter I am still writing to the house I have not yet earned.