The Last Days

I never caught so many glimpses of eyes averted from my space; glances flicker nervously, dart like startled fish, afraid to linger on Death's relentless face. This pretext I do not exist, fear of contact, flesh or eyes, as if funereal contagion wraps an aura, death to be caught like flu from one about to die. What repulsion, what embarrassment drives my isolation? Not mine, I can assure, for whilst I breathe I am alive, still human, still a person within this ailing shell, awaiting in cold solitude the Reaper's gentle scythe. I want to say: Come close and help me pass these last days; sit with me, converse with me, let me know you care. Yet never can I hold the gaze of those who hurry past long enough to draw them to a chair. What I represent to them are black reflections, doppelganger images of approaching destiny; for the thing I will become in the dark night of the soul is the thing that one day everyone who treads this earth shall be. I know that we all die alone, yet death itself is not my primal fear, it is the torment of the emptiness of every passing hour, the torture of these last days as departure time crawls near. I am angry with myself for wanting their attention, I am angry with them for this isolation; I wish upon wish they will recognise my plight, that you cannot get what is dusting me purely by association. Time drags it's beaten heels some more, I wish and pray for them to know, it is happening to me, I'm the one who's dying, whilst they have miles to go...