Watching the young boys dance, the spray of sweat and spit. Every duck and weave, and every punch that connects reminds me now that we are no longer the same. I’m no longer one of them, I’m a visitor, an outsider. I’m from another place, another time, a different world.

I realize I don’t move like they move anymore. Even when I am warm, and in the zone, I’m slow and heavy and plodding, compared to these light young boys.

They are kinder to me than I am to myself.

You don’t play at boxing, like baseball or tennis or golf, you don’t play, you fight. You win or you lose. You break bones. You bleed. You get old.

It’s really that simple.

Sitting, in my own silence, I hear the grunts, the deep thud of thick gloves on heavy bags, and guts, and ribs. I smell sweat and canvas and mold and blood.

Young hands move as fast as light.

My hands are slow and arthritic. Even wrapped and gloved, they hurt on contact, pain shoots up to my shoulders. Too many broken bones connected to too many broken bones.

I used to be fast as light.

I used to be impervious and unmovable, a stone wall.

Walls crumble.

But these boys, now, these young men who picked it up where the old men laid it down, Jesus, they are fast.

I shake my head and close my eyes and I feel the sounds as I feel these very old bones.