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The Breather

By Billy Collins b. 1941 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.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).

Biography

Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. John Updike praised Collins for writing “lovely poems...Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all . . .

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