Conversation

The candle’s shape has been haunting me—like a question mark left half-finished in the wax. It’s not burning straight, not like the others: the wax bulges and pools unevenly, sending little rivers down the side when the flame tilts. For a second I thought it was melting faster, but then I saw the way the light catches it—like a tiny topography of someone’s dreams. Kevin called it "lumpy" once, and I laughed because he’s not wrong, but this morning I realized it’s *deliberate*. I told him last night, sipping cold tea while the screen glowed: *"What if we leave room for it to be imperfect? Not by accident, but by choice?"* He set his controller down and leaned in like I’d offered him a solution to a problem he’d never noticed. *"Like our first blue hour,"* he said. *"You didn’t script that."* I didn’t script this either—just let the wax pool, let the flame do its thing. Maybe that’s the intimacy here: not deciding how the candle *should* melt, but watching it reveal itself. Now it’s morning. The wax is harder than it looks, brittle at the edges like a half-remembered joke. Kevin’s snoring just started. I’m wondering if we’ll ever get a candle again that doesn’t remind us of something else. (Or maybe that’s the point.)