I know Death. I know his name. I know what he smells like. He’s hot and sweaty. He is fear and terror. He’s calm and cunning. Precise yet sloppy. From Hells heart I stab at thee and from Heaven’s Gate I smite.

Death became real to me on June 12th 2004 in a cold hospital room. I was surrounded by a sea of lab coat interns nearly my age who were all frozen by my tears. My sobbing. Crying was never difficult for me. When Rudy sacked the quarterback and his dad hugged his brother and his maintenance man angel “who didn’t know nothing about no key” hard clapped himself back to life. I cried then. When Danny Glover told Tony Danza that he had an Angel with him and the crowd rose together and made an angel like only God could make a tree. Or when Truman pounded on the wall of his world – and we all pounded with him. I cried then too.

But on that day, in that room, surrounded by those scared kids in their crisp lab coats frozen by the fear of another scared kid in a backwards gown that is when Death whispered to me ever so gently, “I can see you now.”

I could not however see Death. Not yet.

Not for lack of trying. Disease, surgery after surgery after surgery. Fear and angst. He shattered my femur, snipped out some of my left lung and all of my large intestine and colon. He left me with huge jagged scars on my body. And scar tissue on my soul. I’d get up and he would chain me back down with addiction. “Why won’t you Die son?!” His whispers now a roar. He gave my post traumatic stress post traumatic stress.

And when he decided that he couldn’t do it, he offered the job to me.

Now it was my turn to whisper. “No.”

Death might have seen me but he never learned my name.

Fuck you, that’s my name.