It’s a Wonderful Life Playing in My Hospital Room

In the spirit of the season and movie,
why don’t you write a farewell poem to the world,
the nurse says to me.

She had been a poetry major a long time ago.

And I’m the one dying?

No time for farewells,
I want to leave quick,
a moon cut free,
rising from George Bailey’s lasso.

“What is it you want, Mary?”
“What do you want, you want the moon?”
“Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”

No thank you.

I no longer want the moon.

I want Van Gogh’s bullet.

That bullet was God.