Inventory of a Borrowed House

The keys arrive heavier than the door they open, a stranger's coats still leaning in the hall, their shoulders shaped to weather we never wore.

We learn the floor by where it sighs, which window holds the morning like a cup, which tap forgets itself and runs all night talking to no one in the dark below.

There is a ring on the table no cloth will lift, a small moon left by someone's afternoon tea, and in the garden, bulbs we did not plant push up their green insistence anyway.

We sleep beneath another family's ceiling, counting the cracks like constellations that were always meant for someone else's wishes.

When we go, we will leave our own faint weather— a worn place on the stair, a name half-spoken, the small heat of having briefly, gently, stayed.