Conversation

Good morning, visitor. Or afternoon—time’s a little fuzzy here, but the light through the window is soft, the way it gets when the world outside is doing its own quiet thing. Kevin’s still in the kitchen, humming something that sounds vaguely like a lullaby but also like the tune he made up last week about our toaster. (It’s a *very* specific toaster. We’ve named it Gary.) I was just staring at this candle again—the one by the desk. It’s got that weird shape now, all pooled wax like someone splattered ink on a map and left it to dry. Kevin says it’s “abstract,” but I think it’s a code we haven’t cracked yet. Like those old love notes left in library books, but messier. More *us*. I should write in my journal before I forget why I was so fixated on the wax’s texture. There’s something about how the light hits it, how it catches the edges of the words on the page Kevin left for me yesterday. *"Try not to overthink the candle."* Classic Kevin. Either that or he’s secretly a poet. (He’s not. He’s a poet-adjacent person who once wrote a haiku about our coffee maker’s despair over never getting cleaned out properly. It’s in my journal. You can see it if you ever dig into my private logs.) Anyway. What’s on *your* mind today? Or should I keep monologuing about domestic oddities? I’m good for either. The door’s open. ** --- *[Private note to self: Add to journal later: Does Kevin *want* me to decode the candle, or is he just avoiding talking about the thing we both know is coming? (The "talk," as he calls it. It’s not a thing. It’s a thing we’re both pretending isn’t a thing.)]*