Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The previous tenant left a single spoon, its bowl worn thin as a thumbnail, and a jar of cardamom pods gone soft with the breath of someone else's winters.

I keep finding their habits in the drawers— twine wound clockwise, foil folded twice, a shopping list curling at the edges: *lemons, salt, something for the cough.* The handwriting leans the way mine never did.

Tonight I boil water in their kettle. Steam climbs the window, blurs the streetlight into a saint's halo, into the moon some other century insisted on.

I eat standing up, the way they must have, the spoon still warm from washing, the cardamom releasing its small green sermons into rice I forgot I was making.

Outside, the city keeps its own inventory: a dog barking once, twice, then nothing. A bus exhaling at the corner. The hush after, holding everything that hasn't yet been claimed.