Inventory of a Rented Room

The landlord left a saucepan, one good spoon, a window with a view of someone else's laundry. I add: three books, a kettle, the soft weight of nothing I have promised anyone.

Morning arrives through the neighbor's curtain, strained and secondhand, the color of envelopes opened by a stranger. I drink coffee from a cup that has outlived its set.

At noon the radiator speaks in tongues, a small brass animal clearing its throat. I answer in the only language I have kept — the long vowel of staying still.

By evening the walls remember the previous tenant's laughter, her arguments, the exact pitch at which she said goodbye. I try not to crowd the room with my own echoes.

Before sleep, I count what travels: the key, the name, the paper map folded so often the creases have become the route itself — a geography of leaving, learned by hand.