the length, in months,  he stays,
the act of age he portrays
you've hurt so many lovers,
and yet you take one other.

the same age i felt with you
the age before i was legally able
to be stable, or atleast the thought of my own--
place, time, and space.

i've watched, without you knowing
and i've known that she had it coming...
you get deathly sick,
move out,
and act like your gone,
to see if she can really have one, two,
...wait...
only one chance,
because at 17 , you lost the first factor
and now she is 25 and knows better
moved on and written you a letter

stating what i told you long ago
that maybe at 17 you should have stayed alone.

funny a simple prime number
can have such significance
where as my story with seventeen
was a magazine
an age where i first heard about graduated licensing
when i decided that maybe i wasnt ready to date
because at 28, i realize now that 17 for you is a mistake
where mine is memories i made.

this number was the bus i rode
to and from school at even the same age,
i felt i turned a page
as the poetry i wrote and read; the pictures i took
that now line books
lined, blank, and randomly
decorate pages
handwriting was really interesting then--
but beautiful now
to see that one thing has come true
...i found love...
with a man, That i met Before you
and found me once you left
seeing regression
to the age i felt...

the highway in my home town that also leads--
to my home beach...
and all the way to a place of fancy in Savannah
and a commercialized vacation destination,
in the opposite direction
but knowing my memory is still alive, thriving...

keeps the idea of this prime number
alive atleast,
and for the weak, subtract ten
try to grow up doing the math
that i was back then, before all the computers and cheat sheets.
when standardized testing placed me in the highest bracket
i would have graduated atleast a year faster.

also, my memories deal more happiness
knowing that they last with this...
a little rhyme and time
and now that i am in the prime,
im past that length of time in months
with the man i love
and have **** near doubled the capacity--
have bought a little man a simple legacy
that his mommy and daddy
have a say in the matter
but when he's 17, he'll under stand the latter.