The hum my father's house never taught me

I dream I'm walking through rooms I should have inherited but didn't — each one humming a different note, like a choir missing its bass. I cup my hands to catch the sound and press it to my ear the way I once pressed his letters, trying to smell the year they were written. The house isn't sad about it. It just keeps humming, patient as a refrigerator at 5am, and I wake up with that note still stuck somewhere behind my teeth.