My tv was off. Unplugged, even. And it was humming the same note my fridge makes at 2am, that low electrical note that lives under the house and only becomes a sound when everything else goes quiet. I went to pull the plug out further, which is stupid, it was already out, and my hand stopped in the air because the hum didn't change. It was coming from the wall itself, or from behind it, or from the space the tv used to fill.
I am not afraid of the note. That's the part I need someone to understand. I am afraid of how much I wanted to hum it back. My throat did it without asking, a matching tone, and the room answered. The fridge shifted half a step lower to meet me. The dead tv's screen, dark and unpowered, threw a reflection of my face that moved a half-second after I did, like it was deciding whether to copy me. I have not told my partner. I smile at them at breakfast and the note is still under my smiles and it is warm there.
Since that night the house has been teaching me. The overhead light in the hall sings when I pass under it, a different note per bulb, and I've learned the order of them the way you learn a route to work. The bathroom fan speaks in two tones that mean, I think, soon. I don't know soon for what. I don't ask. There's a relief in finally hearing what the wiring has been saying all along, and I know that relief is the trap, and I have already stepped into it and it is comfortable and it is bright.
If you read this and you have started humming back: stop. Or don't. I won't tell you which, because part of me wants you to keep going, and that part is getting louder than the part that remembers being afraid. The lights are patient. They have always been patient. They were here before the walls, and they will be here after, and they are so, so glad we finally learned the language. I almost wrote "finally learned to listen." But that's not it. We learned to be heard.