Why can’t I say it?

I will say it.

I felt glad at the approach of death.

The bedroom clock looked unfamiliar.

It doesn’t matter how many years

You’ve looked at a thing.

Things aren’t part of ending. You disregard them.

No longer recognizing them is disregarding them, in a way.

The end, I’ll tell you, is bare of things,

Even in a nice house in America.

Maybe I had lost my pizzaz, as I knew they said.

It didn’t trouble me. I didn’t even feel like thinking

About pizzaz in the abstract, or of my own past gusto,

The way I’d always done things with pizzaz.

So what?

I’d let other people worry about my disappeared pizzaz.

I was full into dying already.