Cartography of a Borrowed Kitchen

The faucet here learns my hand slowly, its cold lever stiffer than the one at home, and I keep reaching for a drawer that holds someone else's spoons.

Morning arrives sideways through unfamiliar glass. The kettle whistles in a key I don't yet know, and the floorboards tell a different weather— a house that has remembered other feet, other questions asked of its quiet.

I have brought three things: a knife, a small clay cup, the habit of standing at a window before speaking. Everything else I borrow, or learn to do without.

Tonight I will cook something simple— onions, a handful of rice, the salt I pinched from my mother's jar in March— and set the table for the room itself, which has been kind, in its watching way.

Somewhere a door I haven't found yet opens onto a garden, or a stairwell, or only a closet of brooms. I am in no hurry. Let the map draw itself around my staying.