It is October again.
This is my favorite time of year.
For me the year ends, and begins here.


It’s the light.
It attaches to every surface, rich, and brown and thick like honey.


Everything smells different.
It is the death in the air, imminent, urgent, flapping its wings like a hovering bird.


This is how the year should die, after the rain in September and before the cold in November.
In stately October, where there is no petulant rain, nor singing heat, nor is the year hoary with cold.


I hope I die like this.
Strong, at the height of my powers, my mind keen, and my blood singing through my veins.
I want to be full of life, I want to feel it bleeding away as I die.
I will not die stupid with age, or wasted with disease, sickened by life.
I have seen too many deaths like that.


It is not in my hands, of course.
My death will not be suicide, and euthanasia is an abomination.
But I hope for this.
Perhaps I even pray for it.
To what? I do not know.


So I celebrate the death of the year.
Not the beginning.


Every birth is much the same.
Every death is unique.