The whole idea of it makes me feellike I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach acheor the headaches I get from reading in bad light--a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgottenthe perfect simplicity of being oneand the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisibleby drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the windowwatching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnlyagainst the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garageas it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believethere was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. Billy Collins
Some Similar Quotes
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  2. He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem " Outwitted - Edwin Markham
  3. Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay. - Jess C. Scott
  4. The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs. - Dylan Thomas
  5. I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm cuz I'd rather be left for dead than wondering what thunder sounds like. - Andrea Gibson
More Quotes By Billy Collins
  1. I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow
  2. It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things,...
  3. The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time....
  4. I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing morethan to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one,
  5. All they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.
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