Sleep story · warm, home
A kitchen late at night — a slow story for the end of the day, when the weather has kept you inside — for a night when you do not want to think
One small light on, a cooling cup of tea, and the rest of the house dark.
Reading it yourself. Back to the audio version.
The clock on the oven shows a time that feels later than it is. The kitchen is warm, and the small light over the hob is the only one on. Your chair is pulled out slightly, the way you left it.
There is a cup of tea beside you that has gone past drinking temperature. The tea towel is folded over the rail, still slightly damp. The fridge motor stops, and the room gets even quieter.
Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part. Let the pillow take the whole weight of your head.
Your chest can be still now. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.
A plate dries on the rack with a slow drip every so often. Someone upstairs turns over, and the ceiling creaks once.
Let your thighs be as heavy as they want to be. Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine.
Let the mattress take all of it. Let your thumbs rest where they landed.
There is no reason to be awake, and no reason to move either. Through the window you can see the back garden, which is doing nothing at all.
Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed. Let your forearms get heavy and warm.
The tiles under your feet are cold in one corner and warm in another. There is a bowl of fruit nobody has touched since Tuesday.
Let your toes stop holding on to anything. Feel the weight of your head on the pillow.
If you feel numb, that's a valid thing to feel. Nothing to fix. Notice whether you're breathing or holding. Start breathing again.
Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed. Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it.
Let the quiet be boring. Let the room get slightly further away.
Nothing here needs following closely. Just the dark. Let your breathing do the rest.
Nothing needs deciding tonight. Let the thoughts come and go without you getting up to answer. The words can start to blur now.
Bad weather is a decent excuse to stay in and do this.
No more sentences. Just the weight of you in the bed.