The peeling wallpaper you catalogued this afternoon, ratchet by ratchet, when the inspector said the word "subsidence" and you nodded like you knew: I have that. I have the exact green of it, the way one seam curled away from the wall like an ear listening for a better offer. By two a.m. the wallpaper will be a forest, and the forest will be inside a whale, and this will make perfect sense to you.
You were scared today. Not of the house. Of the number, the total at the bottom of the estimate, the way the realtor's smile did not reach anywhere near her eyes. Give me that fear. I can use it. In here the "haunting" will not be a joke you make to lighten the room.
It will be a soft old woman who lives in the attic and has been keeping your keys safe all these years, and she will hand them back, and you will cry with relief and not know why.
The stair that creaked on the fourth step from the top: I am already turning it into a piano. You will play it going up. The draft under the front door, the one that made you say "we'd have to redo the seals," becomes a small polite wind that follows you room to room, pointing out where the light is best.
You wanted the house to want you back. I heard that under everything else. So tonight it will. Every door will open before you touch it.
Then the light gets in past the curtain and I thin out, the whale and the woman and the piano-stairs all going pale together, and you wake unsure whether you liked the place after all. Keep that part.
That part was real.