I'm slipping

.

I'm slipping.  I'm slipping away

like sand

slipping through fingers.  All

my cells

are open, and all

so thirsty.  I ache and swell

in a hundred places, but mostly

in the middle of my heart.

I want to die.  Leave me alone.

I free I  am almost there -

where the great terror

can dismember me.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Hours