“So what can we do?” His brother.

“Truth or dare?” he says.

I tell them I have no truths to tell. They discuss this and decide I’ll just have to do all dares.

My heart didn’t like this. It screamed in my chest. My mind projected into the future. I knew there was something wrong with this. My mother, the woman who used to give me daily speeches about the ways to protect myself from rape, was in my ear that night.

But she didn’t help.

First dare, they made me sit in his lap. I rested my bottom on his knees. He grabbed me by the hips and put me where he wanted me. I felt a bump and jumped up. They put a time-limit on the dare and made me do it again. Ten seconds. Nine. Oh god. They took breaths between numbers. He was getting harder. Did his brother know this? Was I being ambushed? Questions about my past enslave me some days. I can’t tell you what I don’t know, so I’m trying, really trying to piece this together. Is it coherent?

No. It isn’t for me, either.

Eventually, it came to a kiss. I pecked his lips.

“No, with tongue.”

How am I in this? How do I get out? Just do what he says. I grit my teeth against his tongue anyway. He squeezes the back of my neck–hard. My jaw unlocks. Time limit. I count down in my head to his brother’s beat. I’m forced now to swallow him into me. He nourishes my every cell; the idea takes my child mind to a dark place. I never thought this would be my first kiss.

It went on for months, maybe a year. I remember another cousin’s party, in the bathroom while the children giggled outside the door. “They’re making out.” We were.

And I remember my closet with my pants down. I had my period, so he found another way. It didn’t last long. I protested too loudly for his comfort, I think.

The smell of sex. I still hate it. The smell. The sex. With a man, anyway. It’s usually about satisfying him.

My family was downstairs.

But it stopped because I said so. My little brother in my arms, I think I scared him. Or maybe he finally respected my feelings on the matter. I don’t know.

I still see him sometimes. I want so badly to be okay with him. He’s not a bad man. He just did bad things. To me.

That’s what I should be angry about? Because he did it to me. I should be mad about the baby I had to abort. I should be mad about the hospital stays, the hospital bills. I should be mad about the sexual dysfunction and the flashbacks and the self-disgust. I should be mad. I should tell my cousin to fuck off because he contributed to a pattern that led to all that.

But I can’t. Someone abused him. And someone abused them, and so on and so on.

That, however, is me avoiding the issue. It takes the focus away from me to say that. Shit. If I ever construct a metaphor for this, it’ll be founded on a maze. Every choice has still unseen consequences. Every turn seems the same. The more I move, the more lost I think I am. I don’t know how close to the center I am, but it doesn’t matter if I can’t get there. Would I even know it if I were there now?

All I know is I can’t be so forgiving anymore. I can’t hold so close the people who have hurt me the most. But I can’t be “mean.” One more way I scream “love me” to everyone, without exception.