NOT KEEPING SCORE

Fun Fact: My aunt, who I love dearly despite snoring, loves the color purple. You know the poem When I’m an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple? She’s a subscriber. Only, it’s not just her clothes. Everything, always purple. Her house: painted and furnished in purple. Her toiletries: purple. She even eats with purple silverware. True story.

Morning. In the town of Mora, she and I stop for shortstack and papitas at Cowboy Kitchen. Aunt Purple. Thin coffee. Local paper. Chicken placemats. So overtaken with the relaxed morning scene, we’re halfway to Taos when we realize we forgot to tip the waitress.

Out of feelings of purply guilt, we loop back to Mora. Only thing: ^CK^ is now closed. Guilt is thick as lavender fields now, so we purchase 1/4 pound of fudge (wrapped in a purple bow) with Thank you/Sorry note and $5 belated tip (note: original bill only $13 total) and leave it with the auto mechanic across the street to give to our waitress the following morning.

This is my Aunt for you. Heart of gold purple.

Taos is dusty and hot and feels pink on my skin. Wandering around in tourist shops suffices for only so long, and the itching sensation of my own ghosts from ex-boyfriend travels and familiar rosy clouds roast uneasily my pale skin. Plenty of SPF — what to slather on for memory burn?

Out to Rio Grande Gorge, the beginning of the Grand Canyon, a yawn that gapes for miles across state lines. Clouds white as blankets and swirly like hot marshmallows — an endless spiraling sugar-stick sky.

Bridge-side, I lean far over to feel the wind evaporate me. With nothing but air underneath, everything falls away. Here above the gorge I am happy — under me I feel the kiss of absence –

Below are car parts, lawn furniture, and a rusty street sign that have been tossed over the bridge and into the abyss. I catch sight of the street sign. It says “One Way.” It is pointing up-stream.

Wrong way, I think.

Driving back across the span my cousin and aunt both gasp at the raw expanse of the gorge. I smile: Lack creates awe; it is the absence of things that gives them their power.

Back in Las Vegas the air smells thin and woody. (We are higher in altitude than Denver.) I walk through the night. Never have I felt so dead than in New Mexico, because the air and earth are dry, nothing seems to grow, dirt coats everything — so when a swatch of life appears, it is startling; vibrating pink pueblos, skies crying turquoise, raven’s black wing — these things alive and vivid strike heavy against this landscape of dead — the entire state, which I’ve come to believe has its own dry hauntings.

Never have I felt so alive than in New Mexico.