A library at closing time (a sleep story), when you are waiting for something — for waking too early

The story, in full

The carpet has flattened every sound in the building down to nothing. Everything here will still be here tomorrow. The library closed twenty minutes ago, and the staff are working along the far shelves, switching off sections.

The windows are dark enough now to reflect the room back at you. A book lies open on the next table, face down, which is technically not allowed. The clock above the door is the old kind, with a second hand that moves in small jumps.

Feel your cheeks let go. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.

Let your tongue sit heavy in your mouth. Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them.

The air smells of paper, dust and floor polish. The reading room you are in has one lamp left on, and it is the one above your table.

Feel the weight of the blanket on your legs. Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other.

Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed. Feel your wrists loosen.

Your own book is heavy in your hands, and you have stopped reading it. The last of the day's light is going out of the high windows.

Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed. Your fingers can stop doing anything at all.

Someone is pushing a trolley two rows away, and you can hear each wheel separately. There is a trolley of returned books beside the desk, waiting to be put back.

Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine. Feel the weight of your head on the pillow.

The reading room you are in has one lamp left on, and it is the one above your table. Everything here will still be here tomorrow.

Let your thumbs rest where they landed. Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it.

The library closed twenty minutes ago, and the staff are working along the far shelves, switching off sections. There is a trolley of returned books beside the desk, waiting to be put back.

If you've lost track of where we were, you haven't lost anything important. Notice any part of you that wants this to be over.

Let your toes stop holding on to anything. Your elbows can stop being hinges for now.

Slower now. Just the dark.

Stay with the weight of your body. Let the room get slightly further away. The words can start to blur now.

Let the breath be the only thing you are doing. Leave it there. They will find their own way out.

Waiting is dead time you can spend on this instead.

Goodnight. There is nothing left to do.

21 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for quiet, books.