Things Your Real Estate Agents Don't Tell You

They have square cut pamphlets for every dollar per square, per month, per year; for every house by the sea, the river, the park

where grandpas fall gracefully and on their backs

what they do not tell you: that sometimes people trip and die in bathrooms, that you are never the first person to live in this room, fooled by the illusions of privacy. That you'll cry between these walls, and the cherry blossom patterned wallpapers that you loved will one day muffle those cries—

and that fights and quarrels with your husband in his white wife beaters will result in small talks, and the neighbors that you're baking brownies for will examine your body with a coroner's interest

and the lungs of the rooms:
they breathe you in like echoes
in a collective with previous strangers and their skins:

they rarely do exhale.