The Poet

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A very slight red warning for this one.

Marty was scared. This was really going to happen, he really was going to lose his virginity. He always knew he would one day, but he’d had no idea when, and he’d certainly not known when he’d woken up this morning, that today would be that day. But here was Hannah, naked, kissing him, and slowly removing his clothes, there was no backing out now.

He’d never seen a naked woman before, well not in the flesh, it was much better than anything he’d seen on YouPorn. Thank god he’d watched all that porn; without those hours of study he wouldn’t have a clue what to do. But thanks to the Internet he felt like an expert. After all, he’d mastered Minecraft using YouTube instructional videos, and he’d watched a lot more porn than he had Minecraft. No, it wasn’t his lack of experience that scared him.

How quickly she’d shed her clothes had made him a little uncomfortable, no sooner had she shut her bedroom door than her jeans had dropped to the floor and her shirt was hoist over her ample breasts. His face blushed as those breasts fell free and when she stepped out of her knickers and he saw the small triangle of black pubic hair, he felt just a little faint.

But it wasn’t Hannah’s over-eagerness that scared him either.

No, what bothered him was his poetry or more to the point, the effect having sex might have on it.

As Hannah pulled down Marty’s boxer shorts, Marty remembered his last review:

“Jones’s poems have a depth and mystery; a sense of yearning. His poetry gives meaning to the indefinable quality of Hiraeth.”

Marty knew exactly what the longing he capture in his verse was; it was his as yet unfulfilled desire to experience a moment like the one that would certainly take place in just a few minutes time. He felt Hannah’s mouth on his chest, his belly, nuzzling in his pubic hair and he felt sick. How would he ever be able to conjure the sense of hunger in his poetry if he had tasted the fruit from the Garden of Eden? There was no going back, once you’ve lost your virginity there is no way of finding it. You can’t look down the back of the sofa, in the pocket of the jeans you haven’t worn for weeks or stand there and think where you last saw it; once it was gone, it was gone forever.

No, he couldn’t do it. Here was Wales’s Young Poet of the Year 2014 and 2015 just about to willing lose his magic powers. It would be worse than when Aled Jones’s voice broke, at least Aled could blame nature, but Marty would only have himself to blame.  The Echo had asked if they had unearthed the new Dylan Thomas when he’d won that prize, could he throw all of that away just for a night of passion with the lovely Hannah? No, he just couldn’t risk it.

Just as Hannah opened her mouth he pushed her away, she looked startled, but he didn’t have time to explain. He threw his clothes on and ran out of the room, out of the house and into the blissful, fresh air. But he didn’t stop there; he ran down the pavement and across the road, he felt free, he felt a poem coming on. The driver saw him but too late. The brakes screeched on wet tarmac and the headline in the Echo read:

“Promising Poet killed in tragic accident.”