Because even in our sleep, we are tired.
Some nights, sleep feels like a performance. The body goes limp, the lights go dim but inside, the theater never closes. Dreams aren’t always kind, and silence isn’t always peace. The mind hums like an overworked machine, processing grief, anxieties, unfinished conversations. There is no “off” switch, only softer noise.
We wake with the weight of battles we never consciously fought. Fatigue doesn’t ask permission. It crawls into the bones, nestles into the corners of our eyes, makes coffee taste like surrender. We are tired in places we can’t stretch, weary in ways rest doesn’t cure.
We don’t know how to stop because stopping feels dangerous. It means looking inward, past the carefully arranged masks and into the places we keep locked. What if, in stillness, the ache grows louder? What if healing requires a language we no longer speak?
And yet, inside this exhaustion, there is longing. Not for sleep, but for rest. Not for escape, but for grace.
To breathe without bracing.
To lie down without retreating.
To exist without explanation
So we begin again—not because we’re ready, but because we must. And maybe tonight, we’ll sleep a little softer. Not with answers, but with the quiet prayer:
🌙 The Night the Stars Forgot to Blink
In a quiet village nestled between mountains and memory, sleep was something borrowed, never owned. The villagers lay down each night hoping for rest, but their dreams whispered like restless spirits, weaving sorrow into moonlight.
Among them was a girl named Maana, whose eyes shimmered with exhaustion no sunrise could erase. She didn’t just sleep tired, she carried tiredness, like a lantern that never dimmed. Her thoughts swirled long after her eyes closed. Her heartbeat to the rhythm of unsaid things.
One evening, as twilight folded over the hills, Maana wandered into the forest, seeking the old Dream Keeper, a guardian, they said, who stitched rest from fragments of soul.
“You sleep without resting,” murmured the Dream keeper when she arrived. “That means your mind still stands guard.” “I don’t know how to let go,” Luma admitted. “Even when I sleep, I hold everything—grief, fear, duty.”
The Dreamkeeper handed her a thin thread made of stardust. “Tonight,” they said, “tie one thought to the thread. Just one. The rest will wait.” That night, Maana chose one thought: I am safe. She tied it to the thread and placed it beneath her pillow. For the first time, her sleep didn’t echo. It softened. Not perfect, not empty but gentler.
From that night on, the stars blinked again. And sometimes, when she felt the weight creeping back, Maana would reach for another thread, another truth to tuck herself into
By: Naazi Morad
