Part 1
The Rich Insomniac:
I lie on a mattress worth more than your year, wrapped in Egyptian cotton and regret.
Each tick and beep of the air conditioner is a stock market crash, a tuition bill, an insurance policy,
A life built on ledgers, always balancing and never resting.
The Poor Beggar:
I sleep on stone.
The ground does not judge me, nor ask for returns.
Rain taps me to sleep like a lullaby and the stars do not demand performance reviews.
The Rich Insomniac:
I clench my jaw and grind my teeth at night while I dread of layoffs and lawsuits,
Of my son quoting philosophers I paid to teach him to despise the life I gnawed and clawed to give him.
Even my prayers are audited.
The Poor Beggar:
I have no god but hunger and she is always powerful and often merciful.
I find a dry bench, half a flat-bread and curry, a stranger’s cigarette. Oh! That is grace.
And no one expects me to be better than this.
The Rich Insomniac:
I hosted a dinner last night of eight courses.
Smiled till my cheeks ached, nodded at opinions I detested,
Watched my friends sip on wine and poison each other with envy.
The Poor Beggar:
I was spat at, today, near the railway station and called a disease with legs.
But later, a little girl gave me her leftover biscuits.
No grand homage to a grander God. Just a small gift from a smaller hand.
The Rich Insomniac:
I read headlines till 3 in the morning.
The world is burning, and I own part of it. Even charity feels like laundering guilt.
My children talk of revolution, as if it won’t come for our throats first.
The Poor Beggar:
Let it come. I own nothing, so I fear nothing.
I don’t padlock my heart and won’t insure my laughter.
And when I die, the world will not owe me a thing.
The Rich Insomniac:
Sometimes I think of walking out, leaving the portfolio, the passwords,
And the boardrooms that smell like sweat in a bottle.
I envy your nights. They seem honest.
The Poor Beggar:
Then walk out. Ah! But you won’t.
The cage you built has silk curtains and a security system.
You’re locked in even when you are holding the keys.
The Rich Insomniac:
Still, I wonder… Would you take my mornings?
My designer clothes, my name on granite, my power to be heard and to command,
In exchange for your peace after dusk?
The Poor Beggar:
Alas! I can’t take that.
Your world costs too much.
And I already own the only thing you keep losing every night.
Part 2
The Rich Insomniac:
I saw you last night, tucked like forgotten clothing under the flyover.
A thin girl growing wider at the hips, with danger forming around your outline.
I couldn’t look away. Not from the men, nor the dogs, nor the casual indifference of the street.
This world will not ask your permission before consuming you. It rarely does.
You walk barefoot past men who’ve forgotten what mercy is,
But your sleep… Oh! Your sleep lies deeper than any pill I can swallow.
So listen, girl, you don’t need to rot here.
I can offer you a bed, four walls, a lock for the door, a roof.
A place where no one will look at you like you are livestock getting fattened.
You can have all of it, safety, silence and soap, if you’ll take from me this cursed wakefulness.
From this relentless self that ticks through the night with no end or reason.
Only the unbearable hum of having too much.
Take it. Wear it.
Lie awake instead of me. Let your mind gnaw through spreadsheets, school fees,
investments and dying gods.
In return, I’ll swallow your filth, your cold and your bruises, if it means one night of sleep.
This isn’t pity. This is a trade.
The Vagrant Girl:
I know your kind.
The ones who call their cages "shelter" and polish their nightmares into porcelain.
You don’t want to save me. You want to outsource your collapse.
You saw me dreaming under the hiss of streetlight and thought, “that must be stolen”.
You offer me glass towers and velvet chairs, but what you’re handing over is a noose made of comfort.
You want me to wear your insomnia like a second skin, crawl into your mind and scream in your voice.
You say I’ll be clean. Safe.
But I’ve seen the women behind your curtains.
They don’t bleed, but they vanish. They don’t cry, but they crack.
I sleep with dirt under my nails and a sack of sand for a pillow,
I often go to sleep broken but always, I wake up whole.
You want to sell me your haunted palace for the price of my sleep.
But even the dogs out here know a cursed deal when they smell one.
The Rich Insomniac:
And yet, when the nights press down like lead,
I still think of you, feral, untouched by alarms or app updates.
I wonder if your sleep could cure me.
If your ignorance is salvation, if your dreams are blank enough to be a balm.
I would give you my home, my suits and my place in society’s theatre.
Let you walk in light and fame and fake applause.
You can inherit my world.
I’ll take your pavement.
Just let me sleep.
I’ve fought too long and traded too much for the peace I sleep in. No, it's not ignorance but defiance.
I sleep because I don’t owe the world anything.
You? You built your insomnia brick by brick, wearing masks for so long, that they’ve grown into your skin.
Now you sleepwalk even while awake.
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