Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle, not mine, whistles in a key I am still learning. Three mugs hang from hooks like questions someone forgot to answer. Outside, a pigeon negotiates the windowsill with grey diplomacy.

I open the drawer and find a spoon worn thin at the lip by a stranger's mornings, its silver tongue softened to almost nothing, as if the years had been a slow apology whispered into oatmeal, into tea.

There is a postcard pinned above the stove — a lighthouse I have never visited, written in a hand that looped its g's like small open boats. Someone signed it with only the word *soon*, and meant it.

Tonight I will eat standing up, again, the linoleum cool beneath bare feet, and listen to the refrigerator hum its single long vowel of belonging, naming nothing, addressing no one.

In the morning I will leave the dishes clean, the spoon returned to its drawer, the kettle silent, the postcard still promising weather. The room will fold itself shut behind me like a letter no one needs to read.