-a collection of lost warmth

naive.

i should have never let you touch me.
my mother should have let let me stay at that house.
because everytime i walk through it now i can remember what you did to me.
in my own grandmother's house.

you're my cousin.
and i will never understand why you had intentions with me beyond that of a family member.
you're younger than me.
you always have been my little cousin.
yet always more successful. more powerful. stronger than me.
you've outgrown me. and i'm terrified of you.

it's been five years.
but after nine years of torment, it still sticks with me.
i don't understand why you ever wanted to see those parts of me.
and i don't understand why i went through with it.
because i was naive, and you always took advantage of that. you always have taken advantage of me.

you know i didn't know better. you know i should have never went along with those things.
and yet as i sit in the same shirt that you groped me through, i realize that you never cared.

you never cared what impact it would send upon me.
and now nobody knows what you did to me.
of course she knew. of course my grandmother knows. she saw me after it happened, knew that something was wrong. and she punished me for it.

i still remember picking up switches in the yard after you had asked to see what i was wearing underneath my denim shorts. i didn't know better. and it's heart breaking that i had ever let you see my bare body.

i was a child. a toddler. a baby.
i was young, and naive, and foolish.

but that doesn't make it my fault.
and it will never be my fault.
yet i still feel shaken by guilt that i can't change what happened. and i can't tell my own parents what you did to me. it's too late now.

and i can't tell anybody because it won't have an impact. everybody brushes it off.
even as i sit and cry to my lover she excuses herself to help her mother. and i feel as if she doesn't care.

as i had told my counselor years ago.
"it was just an exploration period."
where you would complain until i showed you parts of me that no one should have seen at that age.
i was too young to understand, and therefore too young to consent. and you're ridiculous "curiosity" tortures me each day.

i can't enjoy any male presence without feeling as if they have secret intentions behind it. even as friends.
even as family.

and it's your fault. it always will be your fault caleb.