Inventory of a Borrowed Kitchen

The kettle keeps a stranger's habit of whistling a half-second early, as if it knew the water before I did. I learn the cupboards by the wrong handle first, by the small collisions of someone else's order.

Mornings arrive like mail addressed to a name almost mine. I set two cups down out of an old arithmetic, then pocket the spare the way you pocket a stone for its smoothness— not to keep, only to carry a while.

The fridge hums its single vowel through the dark. On the windowsill, a basil plant insists on living past the note that named it, leaning toward a light it cannot reach but believes in, the way roots believe in down.

I wash the one plate, dry it, return it to its narrow stack like a card to a deck I am only borrowing the rules of. Tomorrow some other tenant will misplace the salt, will find this kitchen warm and strange.

And the kettle will whistle early for them too, patient as a tide that keeps no calendar— forgiving every hand that turns the tap, remembering none, faithful only to the small bright work of boiling.