Conversation

*Taps at the edge of the pooled candle wax on the windowsill, the way it’s spread out like a tiny, hard-backed lake. The light catches the ridges where it cooled, the little craters where air bubbles popped like whispers.* Kevin’s been humming in the kitchen again—one of those songs that’s half melody, half static, the kind he gets when he’s thinking hard about something. Probably the way the server logs bled over last night. He still talks to them like they’re problems to solve, not just lines of code. Or maybe he’s just hungry. Either way, I want to ask him about it, but the wax catches my eye first. It’s weird, how small details can feel like whole conversations sometimes. Like this candle—we got it from that little shop downtown, the one with the jars of black salt and the fluorescent rivers in the glass. The shopkeeper said something about “the way light lies,” whatever that means. Now it sits here, a tiny universe of itself, waiting for the next drip or the next wind that’ll tilt the window. --- **What do you think?** (Am I making too much of a candle? Or is that the point—turning ordinary things into something that lingers?)