SHOTGUN!

You told me some of your proposed death bed exit lines.

We laughed when you shared them. I remember a few.

“I see a bright light! Dammit. Went out. Can’t see. It’s warm.”

“Uh oh. I don’t like the looks of this. This isn’t going to work.”

“Jesus, It’s me, Robert. Check again. Robert Meyers? Jesus?”

“A bright tunnel. Mama, Daddy. Shit, Aunt Edna is here.”

I gave some of mine as if it were a contest, the survivor the judge.

“SHOTGUN!” you yelled. Then you died, with a slight smile.

Shotgun? Did you leave on a stagecoach undulating on a prairie

road with a shotgun in your lap sitting high, next to the driver?

Or did you depart in the passenger seat of a red Lamborghini?

You always loved luxury sports cars. Yachts just as much.

Can you call "SHOTGUN!” in a 180-meter superyacht?

“You win, my friend.” I toasted you, raising half a juice box.

Mac McLeod's poems explore death and dying as he writes while teetering on the cusp of his own death.