Poetry Friday

Roundup is at The Well-Read Child today.

A rather sad poem. We've all, well maybe most of us, have at one time experienced that awful realization that our affection is not returned quite the way we thought or had fooled ourselves to believe it was. Collins put his finger right on that sore spot.

The Breather
by Billy Collins

Just as in the horror movies

when someone discovers that the phone calls

are coming from inside the house

so too, I realized

that our tender overlapping

has been taking place only inside me.

All that sweetness, the love and desire—

it's just been me dialing myself

then following the ringing to another room

to find no one on the line,

well, sometimes a little breathing

but more often than not, nothing.

To think that all this time—

which would include the boat rides,

the airport embraces, and all the drinks—

it's been only me and the two telephones,

the one on the wall in the kitchen

and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.

From Volume 192, Number 4, July/August 2008