A man was sitting in his garden against an old brick wall. Thinking aloud, he said, “This wall has been here for so long. If this wall could talk, I wonder what it would say. I wish I could hear its stories.

“I can talk,” came an unfamiliar voice behind him. The man jumped up, startled.

“I will tell you my stories,” the wall said. The man looked around and, seeing that no one else was there, decided to reply to the wall.

“Yes,” he said, “I would very much like to hear them.”

The wall told him it would tell as many stories as the man would like to hear. “But you must grant me a wish as well,” the wall added. The man readily agreed.

The wall told him many stories of life and heartbreak, of physical pain he had witnessed, of secret conversations and even admissions of…