Sleep story · warm, winter
A fire dying down, when your attention is scattered — for jet lag
The last hour of a fire, when it stops being a fire and becomes warmth.
Lights off. Press begin and let the story read itself to you, at the pace of sleep.
Screen on or off — we suggest dimming it, or simply closing your eyes after the first paragraph.
The story, in full
The heat reaches about a metre from the fire and stops. The ash in the grate is deep and soft and grey at the edges. There is a smell of woodsmoke in the room that will still be there tomorrow.
The window is black, and the glass is cold if you touch it. The room has gone darker than you noticed, and the light is all low and orange. The logs beside the fireplace are down to the last two.
Let your lower back sink down into the mattress. Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress.
Let your shoulder blades spread out and drop. Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed.
Somewhere in the house, a door closes and everything goes quiet again. The dog is asleep on the rug, on the side nearest the heat.
Feel your wrists loosen. Feel the weight of your head on the pillow.
Feel your cheeks let go. Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up.
The fire will be out in half an hour and nobody needs to watch it happen. The fire has stopped being flames and is now mostly red shapes that shift and settle.
Let your toes stop holding on to anything. Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other.
There is a blanket over your legs that you did not consciously arrange. Every few minutes a piece of wood falls in on itself with a small collapse of sparks.
Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.
If you're bored, stay with the boredom for a moment. It's usually thinner than it looks. If you're judging your performance, that's the same habit as judging everything else.
Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine. Let your thumbs rest where they landed.
Just the dark. Sleep.
Nothing here needs following closely. Stay. They will find their own way out.
Let each breath be a little smaller than the last. Let them. Leave it there.
Scattered attention is the raw material, not an obstacle.
Let this be the last thing you listen to.
18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for warm, winter.