Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

A copper pan with one good handle, a drawer of mismatched spoons that taste of someone else's mornings — chamomile, the dim sweetness of a grandmother's tea.

The fridge hums in a key I do not recognize. On the windowsill, a basil plant left mid-sentence, its leaves browning into commas, into ellipses.

I open cabinets like envelopes. A jar of star anise, untouched since the year the lease was signed. Salt, caked into a little white country. Flour with the ghost of a fingerprint.

At dusk I light the gas with a stranger's match and the blue ring blooms — brief, exact — beneath the kettle that is mine for now, the way the moon is anyone's.