A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

I wrote a letter you didn’t want take it. I tried to speak again with you, but you avoid even my eyes. I tried to say you goodbye but you refused my hug. It was hurting for me, do you know? You will never read this letter. You will never see me in the future, even if we are living in the same place, under the same sky. We are strangers, but I didn’t want that the end was this one. A day you asked me to remain friends. I said no. I wanted to tell you that at that moment for me it was really complicated remaining friend with a person that I wanted continue to kiss. For me, a kiss it is not a mistake. I kissed a few people in my life, and one of these are you. I was surprised the first time you have kissed me, but also excited and... happy.

Yes, I was happy because I liked you.

I was too honest, maybe, but because I don’t want be smart with anyone. If a man wants stay with me, he deserved to know everything.

I had read an Italian book in particular many years ago, in which a young woman stalking the man of his dream and his mother before to make love with him: for her was very important that time because it was her first time, despite she was not too young. She has told him later. He was shocked. When I had read this, I stopped with the reading. I cannot imagine to share the most important moment of a life with a person who doesn’t know it’s important. He deserved to know it was the first time for her.

In my life, I made a lot of mistakes. I will make more of them. But I am not considered the fact that I informed you it was the first time before as a mistake. Even if telling you the truth I lost you forever.

Luckily, I have found another man, My Man, the person with who I gave all my life from the moment of the first kiss. Sometimes, I wanted avoid the kisses with you. But thanks to them, I learned something more about me. I learned that I cannot have a person who consider have kissed me a mistake just because he doesn’t want be the first one (and I hoped the last one).

My Man is not the first one, and I am still wallowing in pain for this reason, but he will be for sure the last man with who I will grow up. I will be a woman, a good African woman for him.

And so, I don’t want you return in my life as a kisser. I hope that one day we could come back to speak as good friends.

I wish that one day we can return to be friends, like the beginning, before “your mistake”, because I never asked you a kiss, just a friendship in a foreign country.

The first friendship after many months I was living alone.

I’d like to think that one day my daughter will be friend with one of yours and we will invite in our home him or her for a afternoon or to spend a evening together watching a movie and eating chips. I really hope our children will be better of us. I really hope our children could be friends without wounded each other.

Take care of you, dearest Eritrean friend.