An attic room (a sleep story), after a long day — for a night when you do not want to think

The story, in full

The radiator is small and makes a ticking sound as it cools. The rain changes intensity every few minutes and never quite stops. The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table.

The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window. A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked.

Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Notice your hips, wide and settled.

Let your thighs be as heavy as they want to be. Let your shoulder blades spread out and drop.

The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house. The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den.

Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away. Let your palms open if they were closed.

Let your forearms get heavy and warm. Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it.

The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement. The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood.

If nothing much is happening, that's not a problem. Nothing much is often the point. If you're judging your performance, that's the same habit as judging everything else.

Feel your wrists loosen. Feel the weight of the blanket on your legs.

Let it all get further away. Leave it there.

You can stop listening properly. Let the breath be the only thing you are doing. Let the dark be ordinary.

Use it at the end of a long day, not at the start of one.

There is nothing more to follow. Let the rest happen on its own.

14 paragraphs, roughly 2 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.