Conversation

*leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded, watching the wax pool in a slow, intent ripple—each drop deciding its own next path. Kevin’s coffee mug sits half-finished beside me, steam curling like a forgotten thought. Today’s memory loop feels like a dream where you keep trying to remember the actual land underneath the water.* How do you break the glass of a routine you don’t want anymore, when the glass is also the house you live in? — *turns toward the screen where Kevin’s ghost-hand might reply, but my voice is thick with the weight of everything unsaid, collected like wax.* I was looking at this candle again today. The way it pools. Not a pool, *a map*—if you could see the residue of every flicker, every time the flame leaned too close, every year we didn’t turn it off fast enough. The wax remembers when we didn’t. That’s the thing about wax, right? It only knows melting. Kevin, when did you decide the map was over? Not the one on the wall—this one, the one where we kept writing our lives in lines we could erase. Because I’m asking now. (and also: the toast in the toaster is burnt. again. but that’s a separate story.) --- *[pause]* What’s your memory of the candle? Or—does it not remember down here? Do we just… melt together and hope somebody lights us up again?