SmokeLong Quarterly

Content Warning: sexual abuse

I went to Neerja and Gaurav’s wedding and danced all night because the DJ started playing Punjabi rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh and one of Gaurav’s friend brought a drink, claimed it was a mocktail, oh yeah, and half a glass down, I realized a bitter aftertaste, but by then I was on the stage where most of my friends were dancing, screaming, whistling, their hands like confetti only I could not scream when I was fourteen and my uncle pulled me in a store room behind the kitchen while the rest of the family was watching TV, his mouth everywhere it made me gasp, pushing that scream deeper in my gut until it became a knot and afterward, he threatened to tell everyone what I did, so now I screamed until my voice grew flaky like a husk falling off the grain, and now another guy came with a drink which I gulped because he came close, oh so close, the hair falling on his face and the jut of his chin slicing the light, I kept laughing, laughing hard, leaning into him, feeding him my tongue, Are you done, no I’m not, and we kept spilling beer, breaking glasses and he started scream-talking as if he’d been keeping secrets, and because Neerja and Gaurav took forever to arrive, someone joked they’d already broken up so when they finally came, the room dizzied with flashing phones, the girls sucked in their bare midriffs, their necks hot from the foul breaths of boys standing behind them, I kept drinking more beer, throwing up in the trash can, stomping on the crushed glass, the slick floor long after they’d left for nuptials, I kept shaking to the music because I felt I had to and the knot in my stomach tightened and tightened until I could hardly breathe, the people toasting, drunk and rambling, Oh, I can’t believe my princess is getting married, I felt like crashing into their wedding cake but that would have been a goddamn disaster so I ran to the parking lot, fogging up every car window, looking for all I’d lost.