Three lines on a scrap of paper

Nothing in your head is its real size. A thought in there never has to hold still and be counted. It circles, picking up weight every lap, and the total is what you're calling today. A fly in a dark bedroom sounds as big as a bird. Then you switch on the lamp, and it's a fly.

Paper is the lamp. Three lines, five minutes, by hand if you can. Line one: what's heavy right now, in plain words. Line two: which part belongs to today and which part is old and tagged along. Line three: one thing you could do about any of it before bed, however small. That's the whole exercise.

On paper, it shrinks to its real dimensions. Two problems, not eleven. One fact, and the rest was mood wearing a fact's clothes. Maybe a five minute call you've been dreading for days. The cigarette used to pause thoughts like these for a while, then hand them back exactly as heavy. Writing makes a sentence end, and an ended thought stops circling.

Keep it somewhere nobody else will read, and be blunt instead of fair. You can read it to God afterward, rough edges and all. He can hold what you wrote. The day may still be heavy when you put the pen down. But now it has edges, and a heavy thing with edges can be carried. The weight never wore you out. The circling did, and you stopped it without reaching for a cigarette.