Isabel and I are talking on the phone. She tells me that they made a cake on my birthday in Spain… wrote my name on it… stuck candles in it… lit them… sang, “Feliz cumpleaños a ti.” I imagine the boys blowing out the candles clapping and whooping madly… frosting on their faces. Did they have the party when I was eating the bread and yogurt? I smile and wonder about the possibility of a coincidence… and then, stop wondering… but my smile remains, two broad, brush strokes on blank white paper that refine themselves over the days. Later, they send pictures that play at the corners of the brush strokes until the fluid curve turns up fully in a smile filled with pleasure.

Someone blew out my candles.