I feel like my lips are touching the ceiling of the room. I feel like I've lost all sense of distance. I'm so tired... I've even let go of my soul; I've released it, but it too is exhausted and can't float or move any further than my body. It's slumped over as if drunk. They say that the feeling of losing one's sense of distance is only experienced at the moment of death. Am I going to die, then? No, because if I die now, God will have to bring heaven down to me, because my current state of lethargy won't allow me to ascend to it. Farah Mohammad Diab, Lebanese. "The Phoenix's Memory" is her first literary work.