A fire dying down for a racing mind

The story, in full

Somewhere in the house, a door closes and everything goes quiet again. The logs beside the fireplace are down to the last two. The room has gone darker than you noticed, and the light is all low and orange.

Every few minutes a piece of wood falls in on itself with a small collapse of sparks. The window is black, and the glass is cold if you touch it. The fire has stopped being flames and is now mostly red shapes that shift and settle.

Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine. Let your palms open if they were closed.

Let your lower back sink down into the mattress. Let your forehead go cool and smooth.

The fire will be out in half an hour and nobody needs to watch it happen. The ash in the grate is deep and soft and grey at the edges.

Your ankles can go loose now. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.

Feel your wrists loosen. Let your toes stop holding on to anything.

The dog is asleep on the rug, on the side nearest the heat. There is a blanket over your legs that you did not consciously arrange.

Let your thumbs rest where they landed. Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up.

There is a smell of woodsmoke in the room that will still be there tomorrow. The heat reaches about a metre from the fire and stops.

Let your tongue sit heavy in your mouth. Feel the weight of the blanket on your legs.

If your body wants to move, let it move, then come back. If you feel numb, that's a valid thing to feel. Nothing to fix.

Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away. Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed.

Nothing here needs following closely. Softer.

Let the room get slightly further away. Just the dark. Sleep.

Just the weight. Let the dark be ordinary. They will find their own way out.

Use it at the end of a long day, not at the start of one.

Goodnight. There is nothing left to do.

18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for warm, winter.