HIRAETH

The first time Oswald  kissed me, it was by the streets, between the walls of the bread store. I didn't think much of it because my head was filled with fear of being caught by the night vigilante soldiers and all I could think of then was to hide myself. I was also afraid of being caught by the other kids in the neighborhood for what Oswald  and I had was a taboo. It was a forbidden display. 

My love story began during the war of 1944, an unpleasant time for a person of skin color like me to be in love with someone like Oswald . 1944 brought me so much pain, anguish and heartbreak. It separated me from a lot of things. The war took a lot from me. It took my smile and made me grow up so fast. It didn't just hurt me, it hurt everyone who had no power or connection. Families were separated, loved ones were lost and all because of political greed and selfishness. The country had no money but it could afford weapons and means of killing each other . The top officials bribed and bought their way into safety. 

 Hitler took my comfort and peace of mind. Hitler separated me from my peers and he took me out of school. I couldn't attend social events or have friends. He made me grow up so quickly. The war shifted from Germany and the Jews saga and grew  into white German versus the black German war. It was German against my skin color. Germany was fighting its own people. 

Of course I am Rhineland's bastard, a contamination to the German race. I was an insult to the German people. Paris, the species that should never have been born. I was a product of my mother's teenage romance with a French soldier.  And bearing a name as Paris never helped me in public. 

Regardless of the hate against me, I loved Germany and all I wanted was for it to love me back. I desperately craved it like I craved a fatherly love. My mother's love was never enough to fill those gaps and this made me vulnerable to the words on the streets. 

Oswald  and I met during a parade. I was not allowed to join the other girls because I was black German. So I and two other black kids from the block went to the stream to cry our hearts out. We were washing our feet when we had someone cry from the bush, it was Oswald  and he had been bitten by a snake. Köen and Günter left Oswald  to his fate as he would have done the same to them, but I stayed back. I used the alphabet engraved metal on my beret to cut the wound and suck the poison as my mother had taught me. That was the beginning of our traumatizing love story. 

 What I enjoyed the most and fantasized of all my moments each spent together with Oswald  was our second kiss. The kiss that took my virginity and could have made me a young mother if not that Germany demanded I should be sterilized to avoid birthing more Negros. The second kiss was not on the street nor was it under a cave or a hidden place, no. It was in my room. 

You see, my mother had left on a three-day journey to get my sterilization papers stamped. She claimed it would give me comfort and protect me from embarrassment, but what comfort comes from being unable to become a mother. 

The heavens knew how badly my lips reacted to that kiss, it was intense and flaming. My skin melted into his gentle caress on my thighs. Oswald  was my first and I wasn't his but I never believed that those fingers of his had touched another woman the same way it touched me. It was my first time and I could feel those burning emotions on my eighteen-year old heart. He kissed with so much passion and enigma like I had seen in soap Operas. All I wanted at that time was to be part of Oswald 's world for I had already let him into mine. 

You see, our love was forbidden, it was a crime that came with death as its punishment but Oswald  never withered. He loved me, he wanted me happy, he wanted me to eat three times a day and wear clean clothes, breathe properly, sleep and wake up peacefully without fear of being murdered while hiding for my life. He would always joke of building a family with me and I would always join in the delusion.