Amusing Death

I was told I would meet Death in the B2 café but I seem to have been misled. I am not Death, he told me, Death refuses revelation. There is none who will see Death, or ever will. Then who, I asked, are you? I am his spectre, he said, and I prefer my coffee black. Are you not interested in why you have been summoned? I am, I said—I was about to ask why she (he… she…seemed to shift genders effortlessly) … why his speech sounded so archaic… but realized this might sound foolish. To be your muse, she said... not me, I mean... but Death. Do you know why? Because of what I realized while snuffing albuteral and Atrovent till dawn at the hospital Friday night? Yes, he said. That the subject of every poem… Yes, Death said… or his spectre, now wearing a white shift, tiara and heels, as though he had a change of mind half way to the next sex)... is Death. Yes. & We know, he said... we know that you love us. That you always have... I blushed.  ...& out of this love will come poems to the end of your days. Remember, she said… how in your youth, when you were in love, the poems would come almost without effort. This is true, I said, but they were all such shitty poems. Because you did not know. You had not yet realized.... You always thought it was this girl or that—when all along, he said. When all along… All along... it was you? And Death smiled… the most beautiful smile I have ever seen…