text: I'd never thought I'd actually be awake after I died. I remember my last breath. I remember watching TV from the corner of my eye as I lay on the doctor's table. Soccer was on but my team wasn't playing. I felt chemical warmth squiggle up my left arm when Messi scored a goal. My self-preservation instinct kicked in. I wanted to shout, to stop my euthanasia, but when I tried to speak my lungs didn't obey. The paralyzing agent was swift and merciful. My lungs had already failed. Death comes with a unique set of feelings. One reminded me of when I was a kid-- I'd puff my cheeks and hold my breath so my face could get red. Once, my face went purple. I got dizzy and I scared mother. It felt just like then. I felt blood in my face and heard drums in my temples. And under my skin, I felt something like lead pinning me down. I felt rigid. It wasn't pleasant. I tried to move an arm. I couldn't. And I tried to move a wrist, unsuccessfully. I was so desperate to hold on to my body that I even strained to move a pinky-finger. I had no more will to channel. The thumping around my temples ceased. For a while, I could still move my eyeballs. I panicked and I darted them around. Everything got blurry. I could do nothing, so I acquiesced. The heavy feeling left; I remember my last breath trickle from my lips. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I rose with my breath. I didn't see anything flash before my eyes. I wasn't even afraid-- I felt helpless, only. It didn't hurt, but I can see why some people might find it painful. In that last moment of my death, every second felt like a decade. The feeling is distinct. I felt like I'd been preparing to die my whole life-- as if life's meaning were to perish. I could still see the blurry outline of my gowned body on the tan leather table as I rose. I was a helium balloon leaving a child's hand. I'd been released: I was being levitated by my last breath. The further I rose, the colder and darker it got. The ceiling was to my back now, and I could see my corpse on *its* back below. I rose far enough that I should've been able to see the whole hospital, but I didn't. I saw only my hospice room, bounded by four walls. Outside those walls there was nothing. All of reality was contained in those four walls; all of reality had always been just four walls. The room got smaller. After a while, I was so far up that I could only see a white spec where my hospice room once was. Eventually, even that spec disappeared in the overwhelming sea of cold, dark, primordial nothing. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I thought it would be easy to reconcile with not having a body. I thought reconciliation would be quick, relatively speaking. I've now been without a body for longer than I ever had one. Yet reconciliation has been neither easy, nor quick. I cannot get over the fact that I could once breathe, eat, and have wrists. It's ironic: to be frank, I don't even remember what a wrist is. Perhaps They remember. I know that there are others here with me. We're like balloons in a bunch, blindly bumping into each other as we float. Unable to have wrists. Unable to crawl. We only float. Sometimes, it gets crowded. Like grapes on a fecund vine, our bunch grows heavy and begins to sag towards the spec of light. But we never sag too far. For They are always quick to notice. And as we sag, the Harvesters above always reap those among us who are highest. They reap so we may continue to rise. For such is our purpose. We sag. And we rise. And in time, we are reaped.