Ouija Queen

My Uncle Bobby is a queen,

a flaming homo.

He’s a one man walking gay pride parade - 

the kind who paints his fingernails pink and puts on fake eyelashes and a green mud mask when he’s drunk. 

He says words like “chiren” for children and “mami” instead of mom

and he always asks how I’m “derin’”.

Uncle Bobby shows up for special occasions and then every year or so when he feels like dropping in.

He’ll ask to stay a while and he’ll tell us, momma and I, stories in his ebonic tongue and after a bit of Grey Goose

he’ll walk through the house with foil on his head and a flickering candle in his hands as he stumbles through the halls mumbling things about ghosts and black women.

Uncle Bobby always shows up when it’s important, though, with a card, a hug, a pat on the back with the giant hands of his 6’3’’ frame wearing a freshly pressed suit and smelling like five squirts of a most expensive cologne.

You can’t ever tell about Uncle Bobby. 

As fair-whethered as the seasons, you never know who he’s with or if he’s broke or who or what he’s running from - it always seems like he’s running.

I’m not even sure I know what Uncle Bobby does for a living other than run the best ouija board after a fifth of Captain and a valium. 

I don’t know but I don’t care. 

He’s my gay Uncle Bobby whose not really my uncle -

everybody has one but nobody has one like mine.

I feel like serious conversations were had behind the closed doors of my childhood

but no matter what the conversations were, the best parties were the midnight seances in the living room on a pallet of bread and pots and pans;

making music with wooden spoons.

I love my Uncle Bobby. 

I love that flaming Queen.