Sleep Knocks

I think it started sometime last year. Or maybe earlier. Hard to say. The days blur now—into each other, into screens, into a routine so smooth it feels sterile. I sleep less. Not because I want to. Just... because there’s no space left for it.

These days, sleep doesn’t arrive like it used to. It doesn’t settle over me gently or steal me away mid-scroll. It waits. Outside the door, politely. Sometimes for hours. Not as a right, but as a request.

Last night, just past 2:00 a.m., I heard it knock. A soft, cautious tap. Like someone asking for shelter, they know they won’t get it. And I swear I heard it ask,
“Koi kaam milega, sahab?”

Like it had been looking for work all night, going door to door, and found mine, lit, buzzing, awake.
But I had no job for it.
I was too busy doing nothing.
Refreshing inboxes. Replying to a message that didn’t need a reply. Watching a productivity video to feel less guilty for being awake.
Thinking of tomorrow. Then next week. Then, ten years from now.
My body was still, but my brain? It ran like a factory with no off switch.

I wanted to let sleep in. Honestly.
But how do you welcome rest into a space that’s still doing inventory?
I turned my face toward the wall, tried deep breathing, and tried silence. But the mind has a way of tapping you on the shoulder, reminding you of things you forgot to forget. A missed deadline. A birthday you didn’t wish. A life you imagined at 22, now just floating somewhere in a tab you closed months ago.

Sleep stood outside a while longer. Waiting, maybe hoping I’d finally surrender. I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Eventually, it left. No complaints. No noise. Just a quiet exit, the way daily wage workers disappear at dusk when there’s no job for them that day.

Morning came the way it always does—unfeeling, bright, full of notifications. I washed my face and joined a video call. Someone asked how I was, and I said, “Good, good. Just a little tired.”
They laughed, “Same here.”
I smiled back. No one questioned it.

But the truth is, I haven’t truly slept in weeks.
Not the kind of sleep that repairs you. Not the kind that lets your thoughts go.
Only the kind that clocks in for four hours, unpaid, unacknowledged, and then leaves before sunrise.

And every night, I lie there wondering—
What happens to something that’s turned into a beggar at your doorstep?
How long before even sleep stops knocking?