“You write? Describe it to me.”

Oh, just amateur.

It sounded an awful lot like “tell me about your day”⸺the person who asks it knows just as well as the person who’s being asked that nobody actually cares.

I felt a strong desire to brush off his request, even when the tiny flame sitting between us stuck its head out from above the rim to judge me.

But then I saw the glint in his eyes and I just couldn’t bring myself to snuff it out.

So toasty and warm.

“It’s clingy, like a flame. Kinda like how this tiny little flame keeps clinging onto the wick even though it knows it’s gonna go out in a bit"

I must’ve been feeling petty that day. Petty enough to get back at a flame for judging me.

"I write my words to be sharp and clingy like a hook. I’ll do anything to hold on to eyes and ears, anything to crawl my words into minds so that I can be heard. I’m usually too tired to do it out loud, so I let my hands weave my words, haha”

Somehow I found myself getting excited about this question, this question I never would have bothered to answer before. Somehow I felt like he was soaking in my words the way the cinnamon candle scent was soaking into my clothes. Somehow his presence had waxed my words so well they slipped out easier than butter.

And when I saw the flame dancing in his smiling eyes, I knew my words had reached him.