Prime Numbers
by Bryn Gribben

For the girl on the “Psycho Ex-girlfriend” website sound bites

Him: How many times have you had your heartbroken?
Her: Four.
Him: Oh, ok. Four. Yeah, that’s a good number for heartbreaks.

But three is a good number for a photograph,
A road trip, any gender combo,

and two, a good number for a beach.

Five is a good number of tapas,
while five and two is seven and a picnic,
or the number of times before
coincidence is pattern.

Seventeen’s a party.

(But O, how seven was, without a doubt, the right number
of couplings that night; its link to Revelations is now clear.)

Ten was a good number of people to have slept with, total
But now I’m past thirteen,
the number that is never there on elevators, lucky lists,
or promising Fridays.

There is no good prime time now
for what I have to tell you,

and no good number for all the teary phone calls
you’re about to get,
though really, it’s just one that will divide us

but I won’t stop at twenty-three,
although they’ll make my eyes redlined,
all mapped with those country roads of cryin.’
Their stinging burn will match your hate,
as you compile a joke website that,
yeah, will bring me down.

But don’t you think,
in retrospect, two would’ve been
a good number of times to say I love you
if it was going to end like this,
and if I was a braver girl,
I’d say it on and on.
One after another, two, eleven.

But this I will tell you only once:
it may never be a good time for I’m sorry,
but then again, it was
never good to love you.

return to Letter X