Sleep story: an attic room, when you need something unremarkable — for a racing mind

The story, in full

The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table. There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night. 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 air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood. There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years.

Notice how much of you has already stopped moving. Feel your cheeks let go.

Let your thumbs rest where they landed. Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them.

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.

Your chest can be still now. Let your lower back sink down into the mattress.

Let your calves spread out and flatten. Your fingers can stop doing anything at all.

The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked.

Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up.

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

Let your forearms get heavy and warm. Feel the top of your head relax into the pillow.

Notice any tension that arrived while you weren't looking. Notice the tone of your own inner voice. Is it kind?

Let the space between your eyebrows smooth out. Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other.

Softer. Almost nothing to do now.

Let the room get slightly further away. You can stop listening properly. Just the weight.

Let them. Let each breath be a little smaller than the last. The words can start to blur now.

Nothing dramatic happens here, and that is deliberate.

I will stop here. The quiet will carry on without the words.

18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.