Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The landlord's spoons are heavier than ours were. I learn this slowly, stirring sugar into tea that tastes of someone else's water.

A single fig sits on the windowsill, softening into its own patient bruise. Outside, a magpie negotiates with wire. The light here arrives sideways, like an apology folded into the corner of an envelope.

I open drawers and find the pencil stubs of a stranger's arithmetic — receipts, a bay leaf curled like a small brown ear, a key that fits no lock I've yet discovered.

Tonight I will cook the fig with butter and salt. I will eat standing, listening to the radiators clear their throats in a language older than rent. The kitchen does not yet know my name, but the kettle has begun, faintly, to remember.