The problem with sleeplessness isn't usually that you can't sleep. It's that you can't stop thinking. You get into bed and the day starts playing back and everything is bigger at night. A problem that you'd normally handle in 10 minutes becomes at 2 in the morning something enormous. And then you notice how late it's getting and you start doing the arithmetic on how much sleep you can still get if you drop off right now. Which has never once helped anyone get to sleep. Here's what a sleep story does to help. Your mind wants something to work on. It isn't just going to stop because you asked it to. So instead of trying to empty it out, we give it somewhere else to be. Somewhere with enough going on to hold it. And nothing in it that matters. Which is why tonight's story has no plot at all. We're going to spend an August evening with 10 chickens. There's a small farm and a woman who keeps them.And she goes down at dusk to feed them and shut them in. And that's the whole story. Nothing happens. Nobody is in any danger. The most significant event of the night is a disagreement between the chickens about who gets to sit where on the perch. And before any of that, we'll get you settled.A bit of breathing and some work through your body to let go of everything you've been carrying around since this morning. But first, please make sure that you are somewhere safe to listen. Preferably in your own comfortable bed. And not anywhere you need to stay alert. And if you have a moment tomorrow, when you're upright again, please consider rating or reviewing the show. It's the number one way other sleepless worriers find this podcast. The chickens can't help me. I've already asked. So any help you can give would be appreciated.So now, let's get you settled. At this point, you should be in bed with everything you need. Maybe it's a glass of water by the bed.The light should be off and your curtains or blinds tightly closed. Your room should be as dark and as cool as you can make it. And if you're listening to me on your phone, make sure it's secure. You don't want it to fall between the mattress and the headboard. I've been there. Pluff up your pillow if you need to. Pull your blankets up. There's no hurry. Just make sure that you are as comfortable as you can be.And when you're ready, take a deep breath with me now. Really deep. Hold it there for just a second and then release it slowly. Letting it flow out of you like a gentle sigh. And with that exhale, feel all the tension leaving your body. All the small irritations and disappointments that may have been part of your day. Any tasks that remain undone. Any worries about tomorrow. Let them all go now.They'll still be there if you need them later. But right now, you don't need to carry them. Take another deep breath.And as you exhale, feel peace and relaxation settling into every part of your body. Feel your shoulders dropping. And your body softening. Continue to breathe deeply and slowly. Letting each breath carry you further into this peaceful state. The day is finished.And this is your time now. This time of stillness, of quiet, of rest. Nothing needs your attention anymore. Leave it all behind. This moment belongs entirely to you and your need for rest. And as you lay here, I'd like you to notice your face.Are you holding any tension in your face? Around your eyes. Around your mouth. Let those muscles go soft.And if your eyes are squeezed tightly shut, just let your eyelids rest softly. Feel your arms where they rest against your mattress. And let them be completely heavy, as if they're made of warm, heavy sand sinking into the bed. Your hands can be open or closed. Whatever feels natural to you, just let them be still. And your legs, let them fall into whatever position feels most natural. Feel how the mattress supports them. You don't need to hold them in any particular way. Just let them rest. Heavy and relaxed. And you're ready now. From here, you don't have to do anything at all. Just lie here and listen. Don't even need to follow every word. If your mind wanders off somewhere, that's totally fine. Just come back to my voice whenever you're ready. Now, let me take you to a small farm at the end of a hot August day, where the light is going. And ten chickens are getting ready for sleep.It's the middle of August, and the light is going. The yard is dirt and dry grass. There's a barn on the far side, half full of hay. Down past the fence, two apple trees have been dropping apples into the long grass. And the whole end of the yard smells of it. That overripe sweetness that comes in August when the fruit goes over faster than anyone can pick it up.The heat that's been sitting in the ground all day is coming back out of it now. In the air, there's the scent of dry hay, warm wood, and dust. The hen house sits at the edge of the yard, with a wire run built onto the front of it.It was a shed once. Dark green paint has gone chalky on the side that gets the sun, and a small door has been cut into the sidewall, a foot off the ground. There are ten chickens out there, and the day is winding down in the dry corner by the wall. There's a hollow scratched into the ground. Worked down over weeks until the dirt in the bottom of it is as fine as flour. Two of the birds are lying in it.This is how they wash. No water. Just warm dust, worked down through the feathers to the skin.The one on the left is over on her side with a wing lifted, shrugging the dirt up underneath it in small movements. And the dust hangs above her in the low sun and doesn't settle. Her eyes are half shut. Every so often she stops and lies there, sprawled at an angle that no bird should be able to hold, doing nothing at all. The dirt has been in the sun since this morning. It's still warm. The other bird is squashed into the same hollow beside her. There is room in this yard for both of them to have their own, but they're both in this one. She's a round shape in the dust. Round, going gold at the edges. Out in the middle, one of the others is working the ground where the grass has worn through. Two scrapes back with one foot, and then the other, then a step away to look at what's come up. Head tilted over to one side. Near the water is a big golden one, taking no part in any of this. She's enormous, wider than she is tall, with loose, soft feathering down her thighs, and she stands there with the look of a bird who expects things to be brought to her. There's a small, dark, speckled one who is the opposite. She's into everything. The first to arrive at anything new and talking the whole time. A low, running commentary that doesn't stop. A brown one keeps back by the corner post. Watching the rest of them work, she holds a distance that she worked out for herself a long time ago.And over by the ramp, there's something small and white, standing still. She doesn't look like a chicken. Her feathers hang off her in a way that looks more like she was knitted than hatched. There's feathering down over her feet as well. So she walks with a high step. There's a breeze coming across the yard. Just enough to lift the fluff at the back of her neck and put it down again. The old dog is lying at the edge of the run with his chin flat in the warm dirt. The hens step past his feet without looking at him. The farmer comes down with the scoop in one hand. A plastic thing that used to be part of something else. Same clothes she's been in since this afternoon, with a loose cardigan over them now.The feed bin stands against the side of the hen house. It's metal with a brick on the lid. The brick comes off. The lid comes up. The sound goes across the yard and every bird in the run knows exactly what it means. The two in the dust hollow come out of it. The round one shaking so hard the dust comes off her in a cloud. The speckled one is already at the wire telling everyone. They press against the mesh. And the low burbling becomes quick and urgent. The woman lifts the latch and steps in among them and they go around her feet. Then she swings the scoop out low and the grain goes across the ground. It's a good sound. Dry and hard and scattered wide. After there's no burbling at all. Just ten birds with their heads down. She scatters a second handful further out away from the crowd and the brown one comes in from the corner post and has that to herself. The chickens don't have names. She knows them all. Which one lays the pale eggs and who will be in last every night and which two will be in the same hollow. But she's never gone in for naming them. Except for the white one. She's called Muriel. The farmer ducks through the door into the hen house. Inside the heat of the day is still held in the wood and it smells of straw and feathers and hot dry timber. A dry faintly sweet smell. If you stood in that doorway with your eyes shut you'd know where you were. Five nest boxes along the back wall. But the chickens only ever used two. The basket comes down off its nail. Two brown eggs in the first box. Cool now. Sitting in a hollow pressed into the straw. There are more in the other box and now she has four brown. One cream. And one blue-green in the bottom of her basket.By the time she comes back out the light has changed. The grain is finished. Nobody is looking for more and they start going into the hen house on their own. Nobody tells them. The light just drops past some point only they can measure. And one of them turns and heads for the little door. And then another. And after that it's a slow procession up the ramp and through. The golden one goes early.She always does. She has a place to be and she means to have it. And at the bottom of the ramp two of them arrive at the same moment, but she simply keeps walking and the other waits. There's no argument. The golden one goes to the highest bar at the far end. And then there's the business of arranging herself. She shuffles sideways along the plank an inch at a time. Settles. Thinks about it. Settles again. All that feather has to be got into the right shape and she works at it with small shrugs until it lies the way she wants it. And then she goes still. And she's twice the size she was. The others come up behind her. There's a bit of business every night about who goes where. Somebody wants a spot that's taken. There's a shove and a small indignant noise and then it's sorted out. And over. One of them puts her foot on another one and gets told about it. The two from the dust hollow find each other in the half-dark and press themselves together along one side. Once they're touching neither one of them moves again.It's warm in here. Warmer than the yard now and it will stay that way most of the night. Ten birds in a small wooden box put out more heat than you would think and the wood holds it and the straw holds it. at the bottom of the ramp inside. There's a small white shape still standing and looking up at the bars. Muriel can't fly. All that fluff doesn't push any air. So there is a plank running up from the floor to the lowest bar on a slant, cut from an old shelf. She goes up it every night, slowly, with a lot of stopping, small feathered feet scratching on wood. The plank went up after a winter four years ago, after Muriel spent six weeks in the house. The farmer decided to take her in after it became clear she wasn't thriving. Muriel learned the sound of the fridge door inside a week, and she sat on the arm of the sofa in the evenings with her head down in her feathers. The woman puts a hand under her. She's almost nothing, all fluff, about the weight of a bag of sugar. And she lifts her the rest of the way and sets her on the low bar beside the others. Muriel shuffles along until she's against the next bird, and then gets her head round and pushes it under that one's wing, which is where she sleeps. The other one lifts to let her in. Outside, the brown one is still by the corner post in the last of the light. The woman doesn't call her. She worked out years ago that hurrying this bird doesn't work. She crouches down a little way off instead and holds out a flat hand with some grain in it, and she waits. It takes a while, then the brown one comes over in her own time and takes it fast. One grab and a step back, and she looks over her shoulder to see what's behind her. Nothing is. Then she turns and goes up the ramp and inside, and that is ten. They're still shuffling for the first few minutes. Someone adjusting, somebody standing up and turning around and then sitting back down again. A short exchange from the middle bar about nothing, and then one long, low remark from the golden one, who has the last word most nights. The burbling goes softer and further apart. One of them says something and nobody answers. The farmer lifts the door slightly on its hinges because it never really quite lined up with its frame, and she drops the latch. There's a second bolt above it. She shoots it across, and it's a small, dull sound in the quiet. Then she goes up toward the house, and the dog gets himself up and follows her, and the screen door closes. In the hen house, it's dark and warm and quiet. Ten birds on three bars, pressed up against each other, feet folded away underneath them, heads down into their own feathers. Muriel, with her face under somebody's wing. The two in the dust hollow, so close together that you couldn't get a hand between them, and every so often, one of them makes a small sound in her sleep and stops. They don't know anything about the world. They don't know what was in the news today, or what anyone said, or what's still unresolved, or what's waiting in the morning. None of it has reached them out here, and none of it will. They know the door is shut, and the straw is dry, and there's a warm bird on either side, and that has been enough for them every night of their lives. Some of what's on your mind is real, and it will still be there tomorrow, but it isn't yours between now and morning. Let it go for the night, the way they do. Feet tucked up under you, warm on both sides, and feel how heavy you've become. Your legs sinking down into the mattress, your arms, your hands open and empty, nothing left for them to hold. There's always going to be something to worry over. That isn't a flaw in your life. It's the shape of every life. You deal with one thing, and another thing happens, and in between, there are small clear patches where nothing much is wrong. That's normal, but however the day went, it ends the same way. The light goes, the work stops, and you get to lie down in the dark and hand the whole thing over for a few hours. This is what your body has been waiting for since this morning, and now your heart has slowed, your breathing has gone deeper and further apart, and your temperature has dropped a little, which is what it does at this hour, and that drop is a signal, and everything downstream of it is getting the message, it's time to sleep, and the muscles in your face have let go, your jaw, and the small ones around your eyes that have been working all day, your back is heavy against the mattress, and your legs are heavier still, sinking, and there's nothing holding you up, because nothing needs to. You don't have to make this happen. Sleep isn't a job to get right. It comes when you stop reaching for it, and it will come tonight, the way it always has, whether you notice the moment or not. Outside, the August moon is coming up over the fields, it's on the barn roof, and on the henhouse, and on the dry, pale grass of the yard, and it will move across your window. The room is dark, and the bed is warm, and you're already most of the way there. You've slowed right down, and there's nothing anymore to hold, nothing to watch for, nothing to do, until the morning, just this, warm, dark, and quiet.