With Mia at 3 a.m.
by p.b. wells
it’s 3 a.m.
cold as a bastard
in the Fortress,
mid-March acting like January's meaner cousin,
rain, snow,
wind in the high thirties
gusting like the whole damn world
wants to tear the shingles loose
and carry this place off to hell.
I sit with the Admiral.
my old wet nurse of bad nights,
waiting for my mind to wander
into some decent gutter,
some harmless little memory
about a barstool
or a busted jukebox
or the shape of headlights on wet pavement.
it keeps dragging me back
to Mia.
that wasn't her real name,
but names are funny things,
they can still bleed after all these years,
so Mia will do.
we met in college
because theatre people always find each other,
the poor beautiful lunatics
painting castles on plywood
and pretending the world
can be fixed with lights, costumes,
and a good final act.
I liked acting and writing.
she liked costume and set design.
we were young enough
to think love was a hammer
and the world was some cheap wall
we could knock through.
things got serious fast.
that's how it happens
when you're too dumb to be afraid
and too alive to pretend otherwise.
by the end of spring
we decided we'd marry.
I went home that weekend
and told my parents.
my father shut it down so fast
you'd think I'd announced
I was joining a firing squad.
I don't remember the exact words.
you never remember the exact words
when the knife goes in.
you remember the look,
the ownership in it,
the stale righteousness.
because Mia's skin
was a little darker
than what he wanted
in the family bloodline.
strip the tuxedo off prejudice
and there it is,
standing naked,
ugly and ignorant,
telling you who you can love.
we fought for an hour, maybe more,
saying the kind of things
men say
when pride is cornered
and blood starts talking louder than sense.
then I got in my car
and drove back to school
with my hands locked on the wheel
like I was strangling the goddamn road.
next weekend
we went to her parents.
I had met them before.
nice enough people on the surface.
her mother was kind.
her father knew how to smile
the way some men know how to lock a door
without making a sound.
after dinner
Mia and her mother went to the kitchen
and he took me out back.
we looked at his garden.
tomatoes, maybe.
beans.
some quiet green things
trying to live in straight lines.
he asked about my goals,
my plans,
the usual fatherly bullshit
before he got to the real sermon.
he would not allow me
to marry his daughter.
I was not Catholic.
I was not Hispanic.
clean words.
neat words.
respectable words.
funny how bigotry likes to shave
and put on a tie.
I looked in his eyes
and I knew arguing was useless.
not because he was right.
hell no.
but because his reasons
were bricks in a wall
he'd been building all his life
and I was just one more fool
standing there with bare hands.
when Mia and her mother came back,
I saw it in her face.
her mother had handed her
the same poison
in a prettier glass.
the drive back to campus
was the longest hour
I ever lived through.
two kids in love
trapped between two families
each waving their own sacred garbage.
the choice was simple,
which is to say
it was impossible.
marry
and be exiled from both tribes
or walk away
and let the good thing die
before the rest of the world
could beat it to death.
we went our separate ways.
I transferred schools.
to a Catholic college,
which is the kind of ironic joke
life tells when feeling cruel,
when it's had too much to drink.
for a while
there were letters,
phone calls,
the sad machinery
of trying to keep a fire alive
through wires and envelopes.
that's how most heartbreak ends.
not with thunder,
not with violins,
just silence
showing up one day
and deciding to stay.
so here I am now,
many years later,
with the Admiral in my glass
and the wind outside
raising hell at the windows,
thinking about a girl
I did not stop loving
so much as fail to carry.
maybe that's why she came back tonight.
maybe memory is just a drunk bastard too,
stumbling through the halls
opening doors you nailed shut decades ago.
or maybe fate
wanted to remind me
that racism doesn't just burn crosses
or spit slurs
or strut around in uniforms
like some proud diseased peacock.
sometimes it sits at dinner tables.
sometimes it tends gardens.
sometimes it says grace.
sometimes it calls itself tradition
or faith
or family
or what's best.
and then it reaches into two young lives
and rips out the future
with clean hands.
people talk about bigotry
like it only wounds the obvious target.
it wounds everybody it touches.
the wounds just travel differently.
https://www.deviantart.com/pbwells/art/With-Mia-at-3-a-m-1314124379