Never Even Asked

There is a road in Taos, New Mexico called Blueberry Hill. If you take it for about a quarter mile from Lower Las Colonias Road it will give way to dirt side roads. If you make a left onto one, you will find a row of five adobe dome houses. One of them is all white and a woman from Boston built it from scratch to escape winter.

If you drive over 15 miles per hour down that road, your body will rock from side to side as it hits holes in the dirt. Someone has filled some of them in with rocks, but mostly the earth has given way to vehicles larger than yours. Mostly, you cannot avoid them.

You will slow down. You will be surrounded by mountains. You will roll your windows down and let the air outside hit your tears. You will thank the gods for Tom Petty’s music and rental cars and high-desert air.

If you visit northern New Mexico in the fall, you will be surrounded by the yellow leaves of changing aspen trees. People will ask you what brings you here this time of year. People will try to guess if it’s the weather or the art or the quiet. You will say it is your birthday. They will respond with many words and all of them will include a disbelieving alone punctuated with a shocked question mark.

Yes, alone. I am alone.

The first person to wish you a happy birthday, one minute after midnight, will be the man you were fucking all last winter. The second person will be your best friend for the last 25 years. You will be in a stranger’s bed, holding your phone in your hand, contemplating how much this rectangle of tiny working pieces provides you with. Wondering whether these details of your birthday will be remembered at all by next year.

You will eat a birthday breakfast in an old wooden barn with huge windows looking out over cows grazing in a field. You will eat farm-fresh eggs benedict and ask the server if they have any sweet pastries. You will mention that it is your birthday and he will give it to you for free, because you’re so cute. He will touch your arm when he says this and you’ll want to yank it away, but instead you’ll smile and blame it on southwestern hospitality and sweetness.

For once, you don’t care.

He gives you a raspberry almond bar and it does not make you sad, like you thought it might.