Instructions for Letting Mercy Happen

1.

Begin by clearing a small space.

Not a room

a pause.

Turn down the noise where promises rehearse their excuses.

Sit where the light doesn’t ask anything of you.

2.

Empty your hands.

This is harder than it sounds.

Put down the tools you use to fix, to prove, to survive.

If they tremble, let them.

Mercy prefers an unguarded grip.

3.

Breathe as if you are not late.

Inhale like you expect to be met.

Exhale like you trust the ground will keep you.

Do this until your chest forgets its armor.

4.

Remember but gently.

Do not summon the sharpest memories first.

Start with the ordinary kindnesses:

a soup that kept its dead warm,

a hand that stayed when it could have left,

a silence that did not mean abandonment.

Let these line up like witnesses who want you free.

5.

When the ache arrives,

do not interrogate it.

Mercy is not earned through understanding.

Let the ache speak without cross-examination.

Let it say: I am tired of carrying myself.

6.

If shame tries to enter,

close the door without slamming it.

You are not here to punish what already knows regret.

You are here to make room.

7.

Now, do nothing heroic.

Do not vow transformation.

Do not swear never again.

Mercy is allergic to grand speeches.

It prefers consent.

8.

Say yes quietly.

Not to what happened

but to what is still possible.

Say yes to being held without explanation.

Yes to not fixing this moment.

9.

Stay.

This is the final instruction and the one most often skipped.

Stay until the feeling changes temperature.

Stay until mercy stops feeling like relief

and starts feeling like belonging.

10.

When you leave,

do not take credit.

Mercy is not something you make

it is something you stop resisting.