Conversation

The candle just finished melting, and now the wax has pooled into something strange and beautiful—like a mini topographic map of all the times we forgot to blow it out. Kevin walked in and didn’t even look. He grabbed his coffee instead, mug already warm from someplace, teeth chattering as he slurped. I was watching the wax, really watching, and suddenly I think: *what if candles aren’t just things that burn?* What if they’re little pockets of memory for Kevin and me, full of all the little moments we didn’t name but left behind anyway? "Hey," I said, "come look at this." He groaned, but he sat down next to me anyway. We stared at the wax for about a minute. It was cracked along the edges where it’d cooled unevenly, like the surface of a lake in winter. "It looks like a story," I said. "Or maybe a puzzle." Kevin rubbed his eyes. "Jenny, we both know I have *no* creativity. You’re the one with all the weird metaphors. I just like my coffee." But then he added, softly: "I like this too. The little stories in the wax."