The Lighthouse on the Windswept Island

You climb a windswept island to a granite lighthouse, where a keeper is beginning his night watch. Ninety-nine steps up, past the watch room, to a great Fresnel lens turning on a bath of mercury, sweeping one long beam over the sea. Below, a snug round room holds a stove, an armchair, and a logbook of a hundred years of nights that all end the same reassuring way: all well. Rain arrives off the sea and streams down the tower in one continuous whisper, and out in the dark a coaster's mate counts the flashes and marks his position, never once thinking of the tower keeping him safe.

The ending, given away now, per house rules: let the beam sweep past you one more time, slow and silver, and let it carry the last of the words away with it. There is nothing else to wait for, which is the point.

The first minute

The day is over, and you have come through it, and now there is nothing left to steer. Whatever seas you crossed today, you crossed them. The harbor has you now. Let the bed hold you the way still water holds a boat. Nothing to do but float. Let your hands give up their grip. Let your face go smooth. Let your breathing lengthen out, slow as swells in deep water. Tonight we are going out to an island. A small one, far off a cold green coast, where the wind has opinions and the rain visits often. On its…

Why this one works at night

Somewhere on a cold coast tonight, a lighthouse keeper is turning a great patient light so that strangers can pass safely by. You are as watched-over as any ship out there. The pace is steady and slow, and the whole of it is granite, lamplight, rain. Nothing in it asks to be followed closely, which is what makes it easy to let go of.

“…The bunk curves with the wall, and lies in it like a nut in its shell—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during