Sleep story · quiet, home
The house after everyone is asleep, when you are waiting for something — for a racing mind
The hour when the house belongs to nobody and nothing needs doing.
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
There is nothing left on the list for today. The fridge hums on and off in the kitchen, and that is the loudest thing in the building. The lamp beside you is the only light left on in the whole house.
The clock in the hallway ticks slightly behind the one in the kitchen. There is a chair by the window that nobody sits in during the day. Everyone went to bed an hour ago, and the house has stopped making the sounds it makes during the day.
Your elbows can stop being hinges for now. Let your shoulder blades spread out and drop.
Let your tongue sit heavy in your mouth. Let everything you were holding today stay on the floor beside the bed.
A glass of water sits on the table, half finished. The radiator clicks once as it cools down.
Let your thumbs rest where they landed. Let your breathing get slower without deciding to slow it.
Feel your heels sink a little into the mattress. Feel the weight of your head on the pillow.
Outside, a car goes past and its headlights sweep across the ceiling, then are gone. The floorboards have stopped creaking because nobody is walking on them.
If your mind has wandered, that's not a mistake. Noticing is the practice. Your mind will leave about a hundred times. Come back about a hundred times.
Let the space between your eyebrows smooth out. Notice how much of you has already stopped moving.
Let the room get slightly further away. Sleep.
Stay. Stay with the weight of your body. Slower now.
Waiting is dead time you can spend on this instead.
Let the words go now, and take the quiet with you.
14 paragraphs, roughly 2 minutes read slowly aloud. Written for quiet, home.
If this story does not settle you, try A lake before dawn — a slow story for the end of the day, after a difficult conversation — for a racing mind, A library at closing time (a sleep story), if you have five quiet minutes — for winding down or A hotel room somewhere, on a day that started badly — for a restless night.