Cartography of a Borrowed Kitchen

The faucet sings in a key the previous tenant tuned, and the kettle remembers a hand that is not mine.

I open drawers like opening letters addressed to no one, finding a single chopstick, a rubber band gone soft as breath, a receipt for plums.

Morning slants through the window at an angle someone else memorized. The cupboard hinges keep their own small confessions.

I cook an egg in a pan that knows the weight of other mornings, and the yolk breaks gently, as if it were used to this.

Outside, a neighbor I will never meet calls a dog by a name I begin to learn by accident, the syllables settling into the shape of my own quiet.