Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

What’s Midnight Mass without candles?
They do their best here. Except …
no naked flame permitted.

My chattel – this dratted ‘umbilical cord’
I must drag everywhere, pumping the rarest of air
into my knackered lungs, puts pay to that.
“And we wouldn’t want, for one second,
to be blown away in a puff of smoke,
now would we, Mrs. Lawrence?”

Worse than a prison, this well-meaning place.
No locks on the doors. Instead, iron bars
on the windows. What the bloody-hell for?
Health & Safety, somewhat over-zealous
these days. God forbid one of us patients
should fall, or possibly harm themselves.

And yet, almost without exception, us lot in here,
we’d be more than glad, even ecstatic,
to hasten the inevitable.

Before you go, take a look at my cards. I imagine
folk meant well, you included, but they didn’t
stop to think, not one of them. Take, for example,
yours. ‘Happy New Year’, it says, emblazoned
in tacky silver glitter. For fuck’s sake, I ask you,
how impossible is that?

Incidentally, so sorry I’ve wrecked your Christmas.
A lot more attractive things you could be doing
on Christmas Eve, like getting rat-arsed, as usually
you did. Minus me…naturally – the ‘little lady’
back home, normally wrapping gifts for the in-laws,
who is presently, otherwise engaged, busy dying
in this out-of-the-way, idyllic, country hospice.

So it’s goodbye then, Mr. Lawrence. I trust
your conscience is eased. For now, that is.
Pity the divorce hadn’t quite gone through,
but in a way – I’m pleased. I shall enjoy being
a thorn in your side for eternity.

And I do so hope my ‘replacement’ turns out
to be even half as good in the sack as I used to be,
oh...and that Father Christmas brings you everything
you deserve, and I mean that...sincerely, of course.
Speaking for myself, if he could guarantee
I wouldn’t wake up tomorrow morning,
I'd be believing, like hell, right now,
in Santa Claus.