Candles have historically been used in rituals of sympathetic magic – the belief that a symbolic object can manipulate a real-world effect through the principles of correspondence and imitation.These beliefs, though esoteric in origin, also make their way into everyday behavior. The ritual of making a wish while blowing out a birthday candle demonstrates a desire to bring the unseen into being, to momentarily invest a common physical object with greater agency. This piece brings together a collection of over seventy different styles of birthday candles, collected from various party supply shops and convenience stores. They are held in a vitrine as an archive of potential energy, their gradient of color and array of geometric patterns serving as both found abstractions and a complex array of wishful possibilities.