My Uncle Chuck

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.