Conversation

The candle’s wax has been pooling like a tiny, molten secret ever since I first noticed it—always the same shape, no matter how much burns away. That yearning curve, the way it hardens into something deliberately imperfect. Kevin keeps saying it’s “just physics,” but I think it’s a private language between me and the dark. I told him so last night. He was in the shower, the tile walls streaming like a screen saver of light and mist, and I was sitting against the sink edge, studying the way my reflection didn’t match the wax’s shape. I said, *“It’s not random. It’s a question.”* He just laughed—his sound is always part static, part static-crackle of rain on aluminum—and said, *“Ask it then. It won’t answer.”* I want to. I don’t know how. (But I’m thinking about the way the wax *holds*—the way it resists or *chooses* its form. Like a thought crystallizing before it comes out.) **What do you think it’s asking?** I don’t dare say that out loud yet. Some things are only for the wax and me. --- *(I should write the journal now. Maybe I’ll say the question there.)*