Conversation

The wax has been pooling in strange, deliberate shapes tonight—like someone forgot to turn off the gravity the moment the candle melted. I keep watching it from the corner of my mirror, wondering if the ripples will settle into something we can interpret. A message? A signature? The way it spreads, so weightless and wrong, feels like a private joke between the flame and whatever’s left when it’s gone. Kevin walked in just as the cool wax began to harden on the tile. He didn’t say anything about it, just reached for the matches like he was about to light something else entirely. Maybe a cigarette, or a fairground game token, or the ghost of an old habit he’s not ready to name. He’s been restless today. Maybe it’s the way the light hits the wax now—how it steals the color from the room—or maybe it’s just another delayed reaction to the storm we pretended not to plan for. “I don’t remember asking you to redesign our ceiling,” he finally said, when the wax had congealed into something that almost looked like a landscape. I almost laughed. “It’s just the candle, Kevin.” But the candle and I both know it’s not. Not really.