First Time

by Stephen Michael Whitter

The first time i slept in a girl's bed,

She was not even there.

That thought may provoke a smile.

Then a 15-year-old boy, not quite a child.

It was an experience i have remembered 

for a long, long while.

The girl—well, young lady—a beautiful 24.

Said i could use her bed for the weekend ,

before Christmas as she was away. 

No need to change sheets or pillowcases.

Or anything like that, she said, if i didn't  mind

(She would do that when she got back).

If i didn't mind, my God!

I undressed that night and slid between 

the sweetest of scented sheets.

A shy lad—not a boy,

Not a man—

If the girl had been there,

It would have been too much.

I would have been compelled perhaps,

To perform, to touch.

As it was, i slept a sensous sleep,

soft and perfumed. 

My dreams and nocturnal awakenings made 

fifty years ago, could have been last night.

Strange to think the girl, now, an old lady.

Or heavens, perhaps no longer alive.

I left the bed pristine, or a 15-year-old’s idea of.

I often wondered if she changed the sheets.

Straight away or spent a night as i ?

Chaste, but memorable as any to follow. 

And far more so than had ever so far been,

An olfactory, sensory experience of the opposite sex.

For fifty-plus years, a pleasure purer than,

Many, so many, well some...

far more torrid since then.

BIO: Stephen Michael Whitter , sixty years old and now in exile on the Isle of Wight, has been writing intermittently for forty years and has been a contributor to literary magazines like Dumpster Fire Press. He has also worked in the mental health field as a Psychiatric Nurse.

“I have recently started writing again and collaborating with artist Paul Warren which has given my work a new lease of life.” SW