By James Roach
The boys lined up
to fill my virgin mouth
and we explored parts of each other
so-far meant only for our own hands.
I’m afraid
that if I expose
this to a therapist,
they will invoke
language like “sexual” and “abuse”
and I am not ready
to embrace that trauma.
We couldn’t have known
the meaning of consent,
no matter how forbidden our actions.
We hid our touching
in dark places,
locked bedrooms,
and the part of my parent’s basement
light couldn’t reach.
I never let any of them inside me,
too afraid there’d be blood
or a baby
before it was time.
Lying on a removed section
of folded up seats
from his parent’s minivan,
I remember guiding his hands
to my sensitive nipples
while he went down on me,
my new body giving me things
for others to take.
Trading blowjobs for stolen cigarettes,
baring my girl-
ish figure
for any boy who claimed desire,
never felt immoral at the time.
That particular shame
came later, when I was told
having urges that young
was every synonym for abnormal,
that letting a group of boys
use my prepubescent body
for our pleasure,
between softball games and math tests,
wasn’t right.
I was made to feel
like everything we’d done
was wrong,
like a series of crimes
we never meant to commit.
James Roach (he/him) is most creative between the hours of up-too-late and is it even worth going to bed? He dug up his midwest roots to live in Olympia, Wa., not too far from some sleepy volcanoes and beaches to write home about.