Calavera for my newborn nephew.

Avi, bundle of potential, what will you be?

Will you be handsome? Will you learn to skateboard, or fly a plane or a kite? Will you be able to cross your eyes? When you cross your heart will you tell the truth?

What if you are a nerd? Or a corker? Or a wino? What if you are a genius?

What if you love to run and never stop, or live to sit and never start?

Will you obey and smile and love Jesus? For how long? Will you have a deathbed conversion? Will you believe in hell? Will you want to go to heaven? What if you turn out like me?

Where will you go, where do you come from? Does your arrival mark the end, forever, of the generation of two, The Girls, the reign of teddy bears and nightlight embargoes?

Does your birth mean that someday I will grow old and die? What if I die before I grow old? Will you ever die? Isn't it the lot of the young to be the immortal that the old cannot? Stay alive, stay alive, wave me goodbye so I’ll believe it when I die.