his lips are the sort i have always wanted for myself. they are blushing and soft, a little too large for his delicate face, they hang like petals unfurling too early, self-consciously, as if he didn't know quite what to do with their largess of sensuality. that is the way of people blessed by birth. his face, as i said, is delicate, his cheekbones broad but vertiginously triangular, his chin a round, perilous point of anchor. your palm would have barely to open if you were to take his face in your hand...it would be more uncomfortable for you to hold your hand in such a position than for him to endure it. his eyes are large, as they must be to fit proportionally in his wide brow, and they are crystalline grey, like woodland pools under a twilit sky, and his dark hair grows also with the generosity of some wild vernal plant springing eagerly from the ground and covering stones and the limbs of trees.
fortunately, he is immensely intelligent--not in the smug way of most of upper-class boys that show any predilection for reading, but in the true socratic way, intently questioning, possessed of a round perspective, an idealistic vision and a pragmatic method, open and wondering as a child. i say fortunately, because his constant interrogation affords me excuse for looking at him often, and closely, as i admit i have done. God bless him.
the other boys might be expected to give him a hellish time, but instead they seem to like him. he shows an average ability in sports, along with an eager submissiveness for direction--which may be another exercise of his intelligence. on the field he falls rather short of the platonic ideal--he does not run or leap with any beauty. his coltish body leans forward at an ungainly angle and his hair covers his head like a mop. it is in the sports competitions that i am most keenly reminded that he is a boy, just a boy. i never watch for long.
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