Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle remembers a hand that was not mine — its handle worn smoother on the left, a thumbprint of someone who liked their tea too hot.

In the drawer, three spoons and a corkscrew with no cork, a rubber band looped twice around a takeout menu for a restaurant that has closed.

Above the sink, a window the size of a postcard holds a square of weather: clouds writing and unwriting the same gray sentence.

I cook here without permission, borrowing the salt, the light, the small grief of the chair that leans, very slightly, toward the room it cannot enter.

When I leave, I will leave the kettle warmer than I found it, which is the only kind of thank-you a kitchen knows how to keep.