Those kids who age prematurely: at seven already sclerotic & gray. & I too! Though at first glance I seem a man long past his youth, just a day or two back I was a boy tossing a softball in the schoolyard. This wretched, incurable curse! One moment of sheer, exuberant joy & the next you’re deaf, bent, gasping for breath, flesh yellowed & splotched, & hands that never stop shaking.