Sleep story: a library at closing time, when you have been putting it off — for a restless night

The last of the day's light is going out of the high windows. The reading room you are in has one lamp left on, and it is the one above your table. The windows are dark enough now to reflect the room back at you.

Everything here will still be here tomorrow. Someone is pushing a trolley two rows away, and you can hear each wheel separately. The library closed twenty minutes ago, and the staff are working along the far shelves, switching off sections.

Let your tongue sit heavy in your mouth. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.

Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up. Your ankles can go loose now.

Your own book is heavy in your hands, and you have stopped reading it. The carpet has flattened every sound in the building down to nothing.

Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it. Let your shoulder blades spread out and drop.

Let the mattress take all of it. Feel your belly rise and fall without any help from you.

The clock above the door is the old kind, with a second hand that moves in small jumps. The air smells of paper, dust and floor polish.

Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away. Let the back of your neck lengthen out.

A book lies open on the next table, face down, which is technically not allowed. There is a trolley of returned books beside the desk, waiting to be put back.

Let the space between your eyebrows smooth out. Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress.

Notice if you're being hard on yourself about any of this. If you're judging your performance, that's the same habit as judging everything else.

Your elbows can stop being hinges for now. Let your lower back sink down into the mattress.

The words can start to blur now. You do not have to count them.

You can stop listening properly. Let each breath be a little smaller than the last. Follow the breath out, and let the next one arrive by itself.

Stay with the weight of your body. Just the breath. Let the next part go past without you.

You have been putting this off. Starting is the only step that matters.

There is nothing more to follow. Let the rest happen on its own.