Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle keeps a stranger's whistle, high and uncertain, like a question asked into an empty hallway. I have learned its small reluctance, the way it takes its time with steam.

Cups in the cupboard arrange themselves by someone else's logic — chipped first, then floral, then the heavy white ones that ring like bells when set down hard. I drink from the quietest.

Outside, the magnolia is half undone, its petals browning in the grass like opened letters left in rain. I sweep them sometimes. Mostly I don't. The wind has its own opinions.

At night the floor remembers other feet, their weight, their hesitations near the doorway. I walk softly, not to wake the rooms, not to disturb whatever it is that has been here longer than I have.

In the morning the light finds the window and the window finds the table and the table holds the bread, the knife, the hour — and for a moment, briefly, I belong to the orderly business of being kept.