An attic room, when the house is busy

The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood. 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.

The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years. The bed is pushed into the low corner, which makes it feel like a den.

Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up. Let your ribs stop working so hard.

Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it. Let your toes stop holding on to anything.

The roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement. The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house.

Let the pillow take the whole weight of your head. Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part.

If you're counting the minutes, that's fine. Count them and come back. If you feel restless, that's a feeling, not a failure.

Feel the weight of your head on the pillow. Let your thighs be as heavy as they want to be.

Let the thoughts come and go without you getting up to answer. Let it all get further away.

Let the dark be ordinary. The words can start to blur now. Sleep.

It works with other people in the house. You do not need silence.

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