Dear Uncle I Never Knew,

Do you know that your brother misses you?

Probably not because to him you’re a ghost.

To me though you could’ve been the funny uncle.

The one to pass out half cocked on crappy merlot and barked some incomprehensible gibberish,

All on Thanksgiving of course the time everyone talks about what their uncles or aunts did.

I wonder why we never talk about our uncles or counts like we do our fathers and mothers.

Maybe you could’ve been the smart uncle that can answer every question every time I see him?

I certainly have some questions that a father, a mother, a brother, a friend couldn’t answer.

Like:

How are we defined by our family?

What kind of world are we living in which siblings of the people that bore us leave them before they meet you?

How can the quiet hum of tree leaves cutting through suburban air fill the void left in my father?

Why did you too hate the other so much?

How did you forget you were brothers?

How can I love you just because our hearts beat with the blood of a woman born of sadness and courage?

How can I hate you when all I’ve had to feed on nothing by violent stories of brotherly bitterness these twenty years?

How can I miss you when I never knew you?

Answers:

I talk about you because this world is not so big that I can’t love beyond those tree leaves.

I love you because through each bitter story I sensed a lonely scared soul not unlike my own.

I hate you because you left before I was born, before I could hug you and call you uncle.

I miss you because no matter what we believe we are always linked by stone mountain blood.

© 2016 Jared “I.J” Steinberg. All Rights Reserved.

#poetry