“In his face, age descends on youth, exaggeration on the truth. He caught me looking then, but soon his eyes forgot.”

Ode to Boy, Yaz

Your photo peers at me and I cannot help staring back.  I recognize this person, and yet this is not the face that I’ve known.  The skin upon your cheek is unchanged – I know its texture.  I recall its scent.  The lines around your eyes are surreal to me.  I cannot believe they exist.  Not faint, but strong and deep.  I want to steal an hour, unhindered, to stroke my fingertips across your temples, to intimately examine these signs of age for myself.  Perhaps while you are sleeping. I want to bury my fingers in the grey that grows just past these furrows and convince myself it’s real. Yes, time has passed and we have aged, but before this moment, it has been abstraction and not reality.  You are still beautiful, but you are no longer the boy I knew.