Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The previous tenant left a cast-iron pan, its black skin seasoned with someone else's winters, and a jar of bay leaves the color of attic dust.

I cook in their geography. The drawer to the left of the stove still wants to be the one with the spoons; my hands keep asking it. At night the kettle whistles in a key I am beginning to recognize as my own.

There is a small burn on the linoleum shaped like a comma — a pause some other life took here, then walked away from. I step around it, then over it, then on it, the way grief flattens into furniture.

Above the sink, a window the size of a postcard holds a sycamore that has nothing to do with me. It drops its yellow alphabet anyway. I rinse a single plate, the water running warm, and the house, briefly, mistakes me for its own.