For nine years, I called him my cousin. It was easier that way, at braais, at church, in the WhatsApp family group where my mother tagged everyone in photos from Sunday lunch. He’d laugh along with it, play the part, until one December he didn’t come to the family Christmas, and nobody thought to ask why. I sat at that table and realised I’d built an entire second language just to keep one person safe, and I was tired of translating my own life.