Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The landlord's spoons are heavier than mine. They sit in the drawer like small, sleeping animals, each one warmed once by another mouth, each one polished by the hand of a stranger I will never meet.

There is a cup with a hairline crack running from rim to base, a thin geography of someone's careless morning. I drink from it anyway. The tea tastes of nothing it should — of plaster, of the slow patience of clay.

Above the sink, a window holds a square of weather: gray, then less gray, then the color of bread crust. The radiator coughs its old dialect. Outside, a child counts to twenty in a language I am only beginning to learn.

I have lived here three weeks and four days. The plates know my name now. The kettle sings when I enter the room. Tonight I will eat standing up, the way borrowed people do, forgiving the bread its staleness, the salt its silence.

When I leave, I will leave nothing behind but the faint shape of my hand on the cupboard latch, the warmth, perhaps, still cooling in the chair — and the spoons, asleep again, dreaming of mouths that have not yet arrived.