An attic room — a slow story for the end of the

The story, in full

A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked. The rain changes intensity every few minutes and never quite stops. The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window.

The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood. The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den. The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement.

Let your ribs stop working so hard. Your fingers can stop doing anything at all.

Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other. Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away.

The radiator is small and makes a ticking sound as it cools. There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years.

Let your thumbs rest where they landed. Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed.

Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine.

The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house. The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table.

Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them. Your elbows can stop being hinges for now.

The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night.

Let the back of your neck lengthen out. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.

If you're judging your performance, that's the same habit as judging everything else. If you're distracted by a sound, let the sound be the object for a moment.

Let your lower back sink down into the mattress. Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed.

Let your breathing do the rest. Stay.

Let the next part go past without you. Slower. Just the dark.

Almost nothing to do now. Sleep. Nothing needs deciding tonight.

Not being in the mood is a normal starting point.

That is the end of the story. Sleep is the next part, and it does not need instructions.

18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.