Last night I heard crying through the wall

Last night I heard crying through the wall,

not loud,

not dramatic,

just steady and small,

the sound of someone who'd decided

there was no point

in being loud at all.

I sat on my side of the wall

and listened to something private

traveling through,

something I didn't ask to know,

something that would never let me fall

back into believing

the wall keeps what I thought it keeps.

The wall is thinner than it pretends.

You can hear everything—

conversations, televisions,

the rhythm of someone living

in a space that's supposed

to be separate, but never ends

up being separate.

Sound moves both ways.

Privacy is an agreement

we mostly keep

until we don't.

I didn't know what to do.

Didn't know if I should turn up

my television,

if I should do something

to acknowledge that I knew

without making it known,

so I did nothing,

just sat there,

just listened,

just became someone

who knew something

I was never supposed to know.

By the time it stopped

I felt like I'd violated something,

like I'd pressed my ear

against the wall

when really I'd just been sitting here,

when the wall had just been

too thin,

when sound had just been

doing what it does.

I don't think about that wall

the same way anymore.

I know it doesn't keep

what I thought it kept.

I know what lives over there

isn't as separate

as I'd believed.

Someone will learn

that I know.

Or already knows

that I know.

Because walls don't keep secrets.

They just make them

harder to ignore.