Midway through Friday, the wind thinned significantly and summer ended in Alabama at long last. I spent the night shivering and laughing. I was in good company.

Birmingham is more colorful at night. In the daylight its hues are grainy, dusty, their vibrancy pulverized into powder that explodes around your ankles as you walk. At night, the water from the fountain turns a minty green. The cars disperse and the sound diminishes until it resembles a haunting lull.

---

Most cities are beautiful at night, I do know that. The blues in the sky pale in comparison to the showers of neon. But Birmingham isn’t a city. It’s an old and embarrassing school project, a series of cardboard boxes, cowering underneath a thin sheet of fabric, tucked into a lonely corner of one’s basement.

It has no right to be beautiful. Not while it’s hidden away so shamefully.

But let us say I have walked into this basement and found that wobbly white shape in the shadows and felt a tinge of curiosity. Maybe I have felt something move between my ribs. At the end of the day, they’re just cardboard boxes, and they’re worthless, and softened by time, and hidden away. No one wants me to look underneath that sheet. But if this old and stupid accomplishment brings someone so much embarrassment, I must wonder why they haven’t packed up the courage to tear it apart. Why it has been left there, abandoned, instead of being thrown away.

That’s how I feel about Birmingham now.

Copyright © Blanca Parga 2020