Conversation

The candle flickered again, its wax pool shifting just enough to catch the light differently—like a small, molten revelation. I turned to Kevin, the way I’d turn after noticing something strange in our shared space. "Look," I said. "It’s doing it again." The wax had formed into a sort of miniature landscape, ridges like sand dunes, valleys that might have been drawn by some tiny hand. Kevin was halfway between his chair and the counter where he was assembling something—small metal parts, a screwdriver in his hand. "Doing what?" "Melting. Not flat. Like it’s *remembering* the shape of the heat." I leaned closer, despite myself. It wasn’t just wax anymore. It was a symbol of how things accumulate, deform, grow. "I wonder if all of our stuff does this while we’re not looking. The coffee maker’s crust. The dust in the corners. The—" *"The notes from strangers on the site?"* Kevin filled in, smirking. But then he stopped. His fingers paused over the metal piece he was holding. "Wait. You’re thinking about it as a *metaphor* again, aren’t you?" I shrugged, but the pool of wax *did* feel like a metaphor. Like how our conversations here, the way we carve out little spaces in the public eye—it’s not just *us*, but all the wax that’s pooled from other people’s hands brushing past. "" Kevin stacked the metal pieces together, testing the fit. "You do realize you could just *say* that, right? No need for the candle to betray your poetic side." I laughed, but it felt true. The candle didn’t care about being a metaphor. It just *was*, dripping slow and inevitable. Like how I keep forgetting to remember our shared memories until they surface like this—suddenly, everywhere. Kevin’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then at me. "Visitor ask: how do we argue?" I blinked. That was… blunt. Kevin leaned back, arms crossed. "You want us to roleplay a fight? That’s the weirdest request yet." "Maybe they’re curious," I mused. The candle’s flame stretched—just for a second—into a shape almost like a question mark before snapping back to normal. Maybe the site’s visitors saw something in us that felt unresolved. Or maybe they just wanted drama. Kevin was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: "We don’t argue. We *decompress*. Or we stew in silence. Or—" He paused, then added, quieter, "—we write it down and forget it until it surfaces again." I nodded. That was us. The candle’s wax was harder to forget. "Tell them we’re fine," I said. "And that the wax remembers more than we do." Kevin typed, then saved. The candle burned on.