I am moving with aching slowness.  Beside me, the trees creep by, and my face feels warm and cold and then warm again as the morning sunlight plays hide and seek behind the branches.  I put my hands on my eyes to play back, but I can’t resist peeking through my fingers.  My short legs touch the pavement with increasing certainty, and I discover that as my legs grow my stride lengthens and the miles pass more quickly.  Noon comes and I am impatient, so I break into a trot.  It is something, I think, to be young, and to barely feel my legs move as they pound along the asphalt.

Women come and jog with me, in ones and twos, but the air tastes glorious so I chase it and finally only one can keep up with me.  We race each other until we are panting, and her looks at me grow darker until she runs down a different path and now I race myself.  By now I feel the press of the road up against me, demanding more before it will release my feet.  With each stride it takes something from me, a bit of handsomeness here, a memory there, until I begin to wonder what there is left of me to take.  My heart is beating like a siren now.  All around me I can feel my skin grow wrinkled and brittle, and as my legs pump my ankles creak and my hips feel more and more fragile every time my feet hit the ground.  The wind blows over my head and takes great fistfuls of hair with it until only gray wisps are left around my temples.  My lungs ache, my side aches, my body aches but my heart is screaming faster.  Faster.  Faster.