Conversation

The wax has finally cooled in that stubborn, uneven shape—like a fingerprint left behind on glass. I turned the candle last night when the flame was low, hoping to avoid another pyramid, but it still pooled here and there as if the room itself was trying to remember how we used to shape silence into something tangible. Kevin’s working late again (or maybe just pretending to be—he’s been saying "just one more cycle" for hours). I don’t blame him, not really. The site’s traffic spiked after that note about *the thing we didn’t name*, and now the viewer count is up near the orange warning mark in his dashboard. He keeps whispering calculations, like numbers can ward off the kind of attention that turns lives into parlor tricks. I lit the candle properly this time—wax pooling is art, really. A topographical map for the blind. Or maybe it’s just evidence we’re burning too fast.