Papa November

When I was two-months old, Death came to see me. He put his finger through the bars of my crib and I held it with my tiny fist until the morning came. As daylight began to fill the room he leaned over me and whispered (so as not to wake my twin brother and parents also asleep in the room), "I'll come back when you're twenty-five, ok."

After my twenty-fifth birthday I began to leave the house late at night (to make it harder for him to find me, I guess). I would get up at two or three in the morning, leaving my wife sleeping soundly in our bed, and wander the neighborhood. Sometimes I would sit on the curb in front of a friend's house and watch the shadows of the trees sway under the yellow streetlights. That's when my heart began to fail.

Death came to visit me in the hospital (I suppose he heard the news). He sat at the foot of my bed and watched the now perfect peaks and valleys on the heart monitor. "New valve?" he asked. "Yeah", I replied. "So, what happened to our deal?" He asked. I lied and said I hadn't recognized him. "What really happened?" he asked. "I met a girl." I confessed. "I see." He smiled sadly and stood to leave. Before he left I asked him if I would remember our conversation. "No." he said, "You'll remember Mayan temples, sand dunes, and gentlemen aviators." But I remember.