Inventory of a Borrowed Apartment

The kettle keeps the previous tenant's pitch, a low aluminum complaint at boiling, and the cupboards open onto someone else's salt.

I learn the lamp by its hesitation, the way it flickers when the refrigerator decides to remember itself. At night the radiator speaks a soft, percussive language to the pipes.

A coat hook still bears the indentation of a coat. There is a single fork with bent tines that I have come to prefer, though I cannot say why— perhaps because it has been waiting longer than I have.

Out the window, the courtyard collects what falls: a sycamore leaf, a pigeon's small administrations, the long Tuesday shadow of the building across the way laid down like a clean sheet on the bricks.

I will leave nothing here. Or rather, I will leave the slight warm circle on the desk where my cup has rested every morning, and the way the floorboard near the threshold has begun to know the weight of my going.