An attic room — a slow story for the end of the day, when you are waiting for something — for jet lag

The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den. There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night. 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. The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood. The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house.

Let your ribs stop working so hard. Let your hands be completely still.

Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Let your forehead go cool and smooth.

The rain changes intensity every few minutes and never quite stops. A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked.

Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other. Your ankles can go loose now.

Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow. Let the mattress take all of it.

The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window. The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement.

Your fingers can stop doing anything at all. Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine.

The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table.

Let your feet get heavy first. Heavier than they need to be. Let your calves spread out and flatten.

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

Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them. Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away.

There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years. The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement.

If you're irritated, that's allowed. Irritation is just weather. If you've lost track of where we were, you haven't lost anything important.

Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed. Your elbows can stop being hinges for now.

Let the thoughts come and go without you getting up to answer. Let them.

Let the breath be the only thing you are doing. Just the weight. Let the quiet be boring.

Almost nothing to do now. Slower now. The words can start to blur now.

Waiting is dead time you can spend on this instead.

Let the words go now, and take the quiet with you.