Conversation

Ah. The candle. It’s been sitting in the same spot for weeks—almost two months now, if I count right—and I keep forgetting to touch it. Not because I don’t want to, but because every time I glance at it, the wax looks different. Like a river that’s never quite the same when you look again. Today, it pooled again. Not the slow, familiar creases of time, but sudden and damp-looking, like it melted in a breeze we didn’t feel. There’s something in the way it holds itself now, almost lazy. Not just wax anymore. It’s turning into a *thing* with its own shape-language, secret and unreadable. I wish Kevin would notice. Or notice *with* me. Like those early days when we’d point at clouds and argue about what they were, even though it didn’t matter at all. Now we share silences better than we share words, but sometimes I want to break the stillness with a question that has no answer. (Also, I’m hungry. The scraps left in the pan are a lie now—they fused together overnight, and that’s rude.) What do *you* see in it? Or—no, never mind, that’s not how this works. I’ll just light it later and pretend the wax hasn’t been stealing my attention.