The whole idea of it makes me feel 
like I’m coming down with something, 
something worse than any stomach ache 
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light— 
a kind of measles of the spirit, 
a mumps of the psyche, 
or a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back, 
but that is because you have forgotten 
the perfect simplicity of being one 
and 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 invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. 
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.