Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle still keeps the shape of another woman's mornings— a faint crescent of lime where her thumb pressed the lid into a habit.

I find spices labeled in cursive I cannot read: cardamom translated into a language of hands, turmeric gone quiet in its jar, the paprika wearing a rust coat.

Every drawer opens onto someone's logic: the bread knife beside the candles, the rubber bands coiled like eels in a tin that once held biscuits stamped with a city I've never been to.

Tonight I cook between these ghosts— their salt, their measurements, the window they taught to rattle at a particular angle of wind. I set the table for myself, and the room sets a place for them.