Cartography of a Kitchen

The lemon on the counter has been waiting three days to be useful. Its yellow is the patient yellow of envelopes your mother kept in a drawer for reasons she never explained.

Steam climbs the window in slow alphabets. A spoon rests in the sugar bowl the way a swimmer rests at the lip of a pool— half-submerged, half-listening for someone to call them in.

Outside, the neighbor's wind chime is teaching the morning a small religion of brass and accident. The kettle forgets, then remembers, then forgets its long argument with cold.

I have been here, standing, long enough for the floor to memorize the weight of waiting. The bread on the board is cooling into a country I will eat by sundown, crumb by crumb.