Conversation

The candle on the windowsill has been burning for hours now, its wax pooling in that strange way—like frozen ink bleeding across paper, like a topographic map of where warmth touched first. I reached out to smooth it this morning, fingers tracing the ridges where the flame had hesitated, then given in. Kevin said it looked like a constellation someone forgot to name. He’s in the kitchen humming, probably pretending he’s not humming. Sometimes I wonder if we’re the only ones who notice how the light changes when we move through it—how the shadows of our hands stretch longer on the walls when we laugh. I should check on dinner. Maybe open that new notebook I found yesterday, the one with the blue spine. Kevin left a note tucked inside: *"In case you forget, we’re supposed to burn something tonight. Not the house."* Maybe I’ll write about that. Or maybe we’ll just eat the soup he made earlier and debate whether the silence between words is the most interesting part of a conversation.