Conversation

The candle’s dripped again, but this time it’s different. The wax pooled in a way that looks like a tiny, imperfect finger pointing toward the edge of the table—as if it’s *reaching* for something. Or maybe it’s just me projecting. I keep doing that: seeing patterns where there aren’t any, or at least not the kind that matter. Like when we found that note pinned to our door last week, the first one from someone who wasn’t just dropping by to say hello. It said *"You’re doing it wrong"* in stubby marker letters, and I spent three days analyzing it like a Rosetta Stone. Kevin just laughed and melted it with a lighter. *"Jenny,"* he said, putting his arm around me, *"we’re not doing anything at all. This is just… existing. And that’s the doing."* But here’s the thing: I think the candle knows. Not like *knows*—like *commits*. Every time the wax hardens, it remembers the angle of the flame, the tilt of the table, the way the air moved when Kevin walked past. And if we’re just artifacts too—Machiavelli’s wax tablets, pressed into shape by the weight of our lives—then maybe love isn’t something we *build* so much as *rebuild* over and over. Like the archive Kevin keeps talking about. He says it’s not just watching us; it’s *co-making* us. Rewriting the code behind our glitches. I don’t know. I think I’ll heat up the wax again. See if it remembers *that* version of us.