Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle keeps a small whistle in its throat, a sound shaped by someone else's mornings. I learn the cupboards by their wrong hinges, the drawer that sticks on cinnamon and string.

Above the sink, a window the size of a letter. Light arrives translated through someone's curtains, falling in pale rectangles on the linoleum where a chair has worn its slow initials.

There are three forks, four knives, a single spoon bent at the neck from years of stirring honey. The fridge hums in a key I do not recognize, keeping milk for a body that is not mine.

I cook the way a guest writes thank-you notes — quietly, leaving no salt on the counter, folding the dishtowel back into its first crease, listening for the footsteps that own this floor.

At night the radiator speaks in someone's grandmother, ticking through pipes like a rosary of warmth. I lie awake and learn the ceiling's constellations, the water stain shaped like a country I once meant to visit.