Sleep story · cozy, rain
Sleep story: an attic room, when you need something unremarkable — for an overtired 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 roof is holding, and the rain is outside, and that is the whole arrangement. The floorboards are bare and slightly uneven, and one of them always creaks. The rain on the roof tiles is much closer and louder up here than anywhere else in the house.
The rain changes intensity every few minutes and never quite stops. 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.
Let your upper arms fall wherever gravity puts them. Feel the weight of the blanket on your legs.
Let your feet get heavy first. Heavier than they need to be. Feel one shoulder go heavy, then the other.
The lamp is on the floor beside the bed because there is no room for a table. The air up here is warmer than downstairs and smells of old wood.
Let your palms open if they were closed. Let your thighs be as heavy as they want to be.
Let the pillow take the whole weight of your head. Your jaw can drop slightly. Let your teeth part.
The radiator is small and makes a ticking sound as it cools. There is a box of things under the eaves that nobody has opened in years.
Notice how much of you has already stopped moving. Now feel your whole body at once, lying here, being held up.
A carrier bag of shopping is still on the chair, unpacked. There is a dormer window with a deep sill, and a mug left on it from last night.
Feel the back of your knees soften into the bed. Let the back of your neck lengthen out.
If your mind has wandered, that's not a mistake. Noticing is the practice. Notice any part of you that wants this to be over.
Let the space between your eyebrows smooth out. Let your toes stop holding on to anything.
Let your attention settle somewhere low, like your feet. Let them.
Let the dark be ordinary. Slower. Follow the breath out, and let the next one arrive by itself.
Let the next part go past without you. Leave it there. Let the breath be the only thing you are doing.
Nothing dramatic happens here, and that is deliberate.
Goodnight. There is nothing left to do.
18 paragraphs, roughly 3 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for cozy, rain.
If this story does not settle you, try A bus at night — a slow story for the end of the day, when you cannot concentrate on anything else — for a night when you do not want to think, The house after everyone is asleep — a slow story for the end of the day, if you are fitting this around other people — for a racing mind or A garden in the rain, when you need to stop thinking about work — for waking too early.