He’s a boy with a ball and a compliance in his eyes.

Youth, it seems, is wasted on the young.
Here we have a boy with a ball, and a plaid sweater, and a compliance in his eyes.
He is young, his face round and doughy, his hair curly, his fingers sausagey.
But he is not young.

There is a compliance in his eyes.

Youth, it seems, is not wasted on the young but stolen by the old.
Here we have a boy in mourning and he doesn’t know it.
His elders do not know it.
For they are the ones who dressed him in that plaid sweater and placed a ball in his arms and told him to stand.
He is staring at them with a compliance in his eyes, and a passiveness on his lips, and a naivety under his chin.

He is not playing, he is posing, with a ball in his hands and a plaid sweater on his arms and a compliance in his eyes.

He is a boy in mourning, and I mourn for him.