Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The previous tenant left a single spoon in the drawer, tarnished at the handle where her thumb must have pressed for years into the soft metal of her ordinary mornings.

I find her cardamom pods in a jar marked SUGAR, a recipe for plum cake on the back of an envelope, the word *cinnamon* underlined twice as if to forgive something.

In the cabinet above the stove: one cup, chipped along its lip like a small bitten moon. I drink from it anyway. The chip catches my mouth in the same place every time — a kiss from a stranger who has already left the country.

Tonight the kettle whistles in her key. The floorboard near the window remembers a weight that is not mine. I stand exactly there and let the house imagine me into being.