get to know / accepting.👪 …someone in my muse’s family.
‘ i don’t really remember anythin about my family, uh, blood family, apart from my parents. but when i think real hard bout where i come from, it feels like i should remember something. my uncle is onea those somethings. like - i should remember tuggin on his hair as an infant or how he smelled or something. i don’t. i do remember him, just not like that.
he was the youngest of my mom’s family, siblings an’ all. two older brothers, my mom, then miguel. i think he wanted to be the cool uncle. he told me so, anyway. said how he didn’t wanna be a full time dad but he loved kids so he put it all through me. he wanted to be the go-to uncle for everythin. said it broke his heart when my mom an’ dad left for america.
i heard lil bits and pieces about him growin up. my mom kept in limited contact with him, over letters. they never completely cut you off from the outside, not if you had a family. some people did it voluntarily in the end cause the commune was their family now. — anyway, i’d been preachin for roundabout a year when he came all the way to the commune an’ got turned away at the door. he wanted his sister back, he wanted me back. didn’t give a shit about my dad but - he came all the way to lousiana and got turned away. but he was smart, i dunno how he found me. but he found me.
it was weird, y’know? nobody got a clue what it’s like to have this stranger go on and show up at your church hollerin about how he’s your uncle an’ he wants to see his sister. i can’t remember how he convinced me. coulda been a baby picture. i was so afraid, there’s just these - big white chunks a’ space in my mind where the memories should go, sometimes. i tend to remember the synopses of these sorta events and never the specifics.
i calmed him down. he stayed overnight. he asked a lot. a lotta-lot. so in the mornin when he said he was goin back to ardens to try an’ see his little xio again, i knew what the higher-ups woulda wanted me to do, so i told him, tío, ir a casa. no vuelvas. olvidar esto. ’