Seventeen

You are so beautiful.
Seventeen as fresh as new life.
Even your tears turn into spring rain.
So unlike mine which burn like acid.
All your young days I tried to forearm you
That the softness of a mans words
can cut like razor blades.
When they say goodbye.
That love is a beautiful rose.
That tears the flesh with its thorns.
And that even memories
Can sting like hornets.
You are so young.
And even with all my teachings
you have learned that pain
flows through the heart
Into the bloodstream
and burns Everywhere.
You think this is
of your own invention.
Your sweet young soul
Is so forgiving.
Absolving your young man
Of all of the barbed wounds
he inflicts on your heart
and of all the tears
you shed for him.
I want to hurt him 
as he hurts you.
Find the pools of his man tears.
And drain them through his eyes.
But instead I hold you to me.
As you cry on my shoulder
And I say to myself
She is only seventeen
She will learn.