Sleep story: a library at closing time, when you have woken up too early — for a racing mind

The story, in full

The clock above the door is the old kind, with a second hand that moves in small jumps. The reading room you are in has one lamp left on, and it is the one above your table. Someone is pushing a trolley two rows away, and you can hear each wheel separately.

The last of the day's light is going out of the high windows. Your own book is heavy in your hands, and you have stopped reading it. A book lies open on the next table, face down, which is technically not allowed.

Feel your wrists loosen. Let your lower back sink down into the mattress.

Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them. Let your feet get heavy first. Heavier than they need to be.

The library closed twenty minutes ago, and the staff are working along the far shelves, switching off sections. The windows are dark enough now to reflect the room back at you.

Feel your cheeks let go. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.

Your ankles can go loose now. Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed.

There is a trolley of returned books beside the desk, waiting to be put back. The carpet has flattened every sound in the building down to nothing.

Notice your hips, wide and settled. Let your forearms get heavy and warm.

Everything here will still be here tomorrow. The air smells of paper, dust and floor polish.

Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it. Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other.

Everything here will still be here tomorrow. The windows are dark enough now to reflect the room back at you.

Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up. Feel your heartbeat somewhere far away.

Your own book is heavy in your hands, and you have stopped reading it. The air smells of paper, dust and floor polish.

If you're irritated, that's allowed. Irritation is just weather. Notice the tone of your own inner voice. Is it kind?

Let your calves spread out and flatten. Feel your belly rise and fall without any help from you.

Nothing needs deciding tonight. Leave it there.

Let the sound of this go soft at the edges. Just the dark. Stay with the weight of your body.

Let the dark be ordinary. Slower. Almost nothing to do now.

Waking too early is a specific kind of frustrating. This helps with the frustration.

Goodnight. There is nothing left to do.

21 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for quiet, books.