Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle keeps the dialect of its first owner, whistling in a key I cannot place, some vowel from a town I've never visited.

I open drawers and find another woman's logic— forks nested with the salad tongs, a thimble guarding the matches, three corks I am afraid to throw away.

At night the refrigerator hums a hymn to nothing in particular. The light inside is the color of a hospital, or a chapel, depending on the hour of looking.

I have begun to leave my own evidence: a chipped mug turned handle-east, the bread knife laid down still warm from cutting through the morning.

Someday another tenant will inherit this small museum of small decisions and wonder, briefly, who I was— then close the drawer, and start their own.