December 3, 2019 – All in this life's journey…

Writing this was interesting. I smiled more than once. It’s really satisfying to see how deepening this challenge is making me. Dredging up memories I thought lost. Writing this every morning before I set out, has put colour into my day.

That said, we move.

Find links to previous challenge here

Day 3: Your first love, your first kiss

Love is so inspirational. When you’re fifteen, a swelling bag of hormones and semen and emotions, falling in love is probably the most inspirational thing to happen to you. Poems fly off your hands, as fast as you can write them, lyrics to all the best romantic songs form your regular conversation; a rose becomes redder, the sunset more gold. Falling in love is so inspirational, especially when it’s your first love. You’re certain it would never end, you’re picking baby names and planning destination honeymoons.

Easy to do when your pocket money barely funds the bus fare to the next town.

My first love was nothing like the girls I had crushed on before her and physically different too, from the women after. Perhaps that was because I had been unintentional about falling there, and it was my first experience with growing into fondness.

She was kind. So kind. She had one of the quirkiest smiles ever, her cheeks squeeze into these dimples and her huge upper teeth poke just above her lips. She was, is, beautiful, not in that sharp prettiness that is the product of several treatments and dangerous concotions. Hers is a gentle beauty, soft and unobtrusive, but it pulls your eye and holds it there. She was trilingual, I remember nights learning the Yoruba bits to Styl Plus songs, to sing back to her. Days, poring over German to English dictionaries so I could flawlessly say; “Ich lieben dich”.

Still the only german phrase I know after, “Guten morgen” and “Achtung!”.

She gave me nightmares and happy dreams. Waking in a jolt, heart heavy because I feared she had replaced me in dream, waking soaked and sated because she chose me.
Fifteen year old me, was a rollercoaster.

I told my mother about her, so certain I was of our eventual communalism, why not start now to make preparations?

She is married now, to a kind and handsome man, and has a beautiful baby I hope to see one day. To smile into his eyes, wondering all the time how those eyes would have looked riddled with astigmatism and short sightedness. Hehe.

We never did work out, as most of such relationships go, though we’ve remained friends.

My first kiss on the other hand. Ha. This was a rushed, giggly, mess of saliva that doesn’t deserve prose. Fascinating, strange, I didn’t have another until years after. Learning how to kiss was more about intention than practice. The willingness to exchange saliva with someone else, starts from the intensity of your intent. That’s what pushes you past their breath space, takes your eyes off the zit on their forehead and closes it, and then lets your lips brush and then push against theirs.

Kissing is delightful when you know how. A sense of headiness and belonging overwhelms you, especially when it’s your first kiss with that person. Acceptance. Every kiss wouldn’t feel like the first kiss; kisses begin to take on the role of sexual precursors, and bribes as the relationship deepens. Ha. But every once a while would come a passionate kiss, a welcoming, an acceptance, a binding. Those are the kisses worth anything.