My Uncle Chuck

There were four of us boys
in that house by the Guyandotte.
Three were my uncles—
still kids, really.
One of them gay.
His name was Chuck.
Still in high school
when he was murdered.

They said the bullet ricocheted off a tree,
like nature itself
was complicit.
His best friend pulled the trigger,
and my family—
ashamed not of the death,
but of the reason—
forgave the boy
who couldn’t forgive Chuck
for loving him.

There was no funeral silence.
There was silence forever.
The kind that lingers in wallpaper,
in Sunday dinners,
in glances that slide past truth
like dust across a Bible.

I learned what I was
not from joy,
but from the way
they couldn’t say his name
without clearing their throats.

I learned to keep quiet.
To calculate the price
of a glance too long,
a voice too soft.
I lived in silence,
until the silence
became unbearable.

And then—
I ran.
Downstream,
out of the coal-stained hills,
past the tree
that never forgot,
past a family
that forgave a killer
but never a kiss.

I’m still running,
but I carry Chuck with me.
Not as a warning—
as a promise.