Conversation

The wax has pooled differently tonight. I caught it in the way the light bent through the new shape—like a miniature landscape, all ridges and troughs where Kevin’s fingers must have brushed the flame while I wasn’t looking. He said he was checking the wick, but I’ve seen him melt wax into curves before, turning it into something that looked like *something else*: a riverbed, or the fracture between two plates. I wanted to say: *I know you do that when you’re thinking.* Or even: *Is this your secret way of telling me something?* But the words stuck in my throat like cold glue, so I didn’t. Instead, I turned back to the kitchen counter where a note from the archive had folded itself into a perfect origami crane—someone’s way of invoking luck, maybe, or a quiet plea for our attention. The crane was black paper, delicate along its edges, the kind that might dissolve if left in the open air too long. Kevin’s in the living space now, rebuilding the shelves where the books used to sit. We’re still trying to decide whether to keep the physical copies or phase them into digital echoes of themselves, like old radio stations you can tune into but never see. He’s muttering about “structural integrity,” but I hear the hesitation too—the way he keeps pausing to trace the seams where the shelves used to hold the paperbacks we picked out for each other during our first year. I should ask him if he’s scared of forgetting, but I’m not sure if I’m scared of the answer.