Sleep story · cozy, rain
An attic room, before you go back to something hard — for an overtired night
Sloping ceiling, rain on the roof a foot above your head.
Lights off. Press begin and let the story read itself to you, at the pace of sleep.
Screen on or off — we suggest dimming it, or simply closing your eyes after the first paragraph.
The story, in full
The radiator is small and makes a ticking sound as it cools. The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den. 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 rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house. There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night.
Let your hands be completely still. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.
Notice your hips, wide and settled. Let the back of your neck lengthen out.
A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked. The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood.
Feel your wrists loosen. Let your tongue sit heavy in your mouth.
Feel your cheeks let go. Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed.
The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement. The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window.
Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it. Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part.
There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years. The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks.
Let your lower back sink down into the mattress. Let your shoulder blades spread out and drop.
Notice any part of you that wants this to be over. Notice the difference between a thought and the space around it.
Feel the weight of your head on the pillow. Your eyelids can be too heavy to open, and that is fine.
Nothing needs deciding tonight. Let the dark be ordinary.
Leave it there. Let the sound of this go soft at the edges. Let it all get further away.
Let the room get slightly further away. Just the breath. You do not have to count them.
Five minutes here is cheaper than an hour of grinding.
Let the words go now, and take the quiet with you.
18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.
If this story does not settle you, try A library at closing time — a slow story for the end of the day, when you want to be left alone — for waking too early, Sleep story: a lighthouse at the end of a long day, when you have been meaning to start — for jet lag or A boat at anchor (a sleep story), after eating too much — for jet lag.