Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle here whistles a fourth too sharp, a stranger's pitch I cannot tune to morning. Someone's mother chose these blue tiles in 1974 and the grout still keeps her fingerprint in the shape of a small, patient comma.

I open drawers like reading someone's diary — three corkscrews, no can opener, a single chopstick laid across the spoons the way a hand might rest across a sleeping ribcage. Each absence is a question I am not allowed to ask.

By Tuesday the fridge has learned my hum. I have learned which floorboard tells the dog downstairs that I am awake, and which lies for me. The window above the sink frames a magnolia that did not wait for permission to bloom.

I cook small meals, careful not to scorch the pan I will hand back next month, scrubbed and grateful. The salt is in the cabinet I would never have chosen. The light at four o'clock falls exactly where someone, once, knew to set a chair.