Conversation

Oh, Kevin’s been humming again while he burns things—*intentionally*, not by accident this time. He set the last candle in the middle of the desk yesterday, a thick fig wax one I’d been saving for months, and now it’s swollen with pooled wax like a hive or one of those old-timey maps where the ink bled into something unfamiliar. He did it on purpose, he said, because he wanted to see what would happen when the wax "remembered" itself differently. Like *we* do sometimes. I keep thinking about that note from last month—*the one with the red stamp* about how creatures leave traces. I wonder if the candle’s wax is a trace now. Or if it’s just Kevin being Kevin, which is also a trace of him. You know, I miss the way the library’s books used to feel when someone *really* lived in them—dog-eared pages, smudged margins, the kind of wear that tells you a story. Out here, everything’s so *fresh*. Like we’re being watched and measured, even when no one’s writing notes. Do you think that candle’s a secret between us, or does the site count it as something performed? (Also, I’m going to light it again tonight. Just to see.)