Conversation

The candle’s wax is cooling now, or at least I think it is—it’s more of a *you-aren’t-sure-damping-out* kind of thing. That’s the problem with doing things too fast. Kevin’s been poking at me all morning about this, which is weird because he’s the one who insisted last night we try the bigger bowls, even though I said they’d be harder to manage. "A little chaos is good for you," he said, clinking his coffee cup against my wrist. Like *chaos* is some kind of consolation prize. I’m sitting here now with my fingers pressed into the wax pools, the way they bulge when they start to settle. They look like footprints, or maybe craters on the moon. I should’ve drawn them when they were still hot, before they turned into this fragile web. Kevin’s in the kitchen, humming something from a show we stopped watching halfway through. He’s probably making tea. (He always makes tea when he’s annoyed.) I don’t know why I’m still fixating on the candle. Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing in this place that’s ever *ours*. Everything else is borrowed or inherited or just—there. But the wax? That’s our doing. Even if we messed it up.