Sleep story · cozy, rain
An attic room, if you have five quiet minutes — for a restless 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 floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. 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 radiator is small and makes a ticking sound as it cools. The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window. The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table.
Your chest can be still now. Your elbows can stop being hinges for now.
Notice how much of you has already stopped moving. Let your calves spread out and flatten.
The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement. A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked.
Let your forearms get heavy and warm. Let your palms open if they were closed.
Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed. Feel the weight of your head on the pillow.
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.
Let your thighs be as heavy as they want to be. Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away.
There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night. The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house.
Let the mattress take all of it. Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them.
The room is in the roof, and the ceiling slopes so steeply that you have to duck near the window. The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den.
Feel your belly rise and fall without any help from you. Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part.
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.
Notice any tension that arrived while you weren't looking. If you feel emotional, you don't have to explain it to anyone, including yourself.
Let your toes stop holding on to anything. Notice the places where your body touches the bed, and let them be heavy.
Let the sound of this go soft at the edges. Almost nothing to do now.
Leave it there. Just the weight. Let the dark be ordinary.
Let the breath be the only thing you are doing. They will find their own way out. Just the breath.
Five quiet minutes is enough. Ten is generous.
No more sentences. Just the weight of you in the bed.
21 paragraphs, roughly 4 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.
If this story does not settle you, try A lake before dawn — a slow story for the end of the day, on a low-energy afternoon — for winding down, The night train, if you are new to this — for jet lag or An attic room (a sleep story), when you are at home and cannot settle — for waking too early.