I am the Sleep Demon. I steal sleep

I am the Sleep Demon.

I steal sleep.

Kick in the ribs of midnight

and listen to the darkness weep.

Insomnia is a feral bitch

with cracked lips and a switchblade grin,

she straddles my chest at 3:17

and dares my heart to give in.

Nine years clean off meth.

Nine years denying that breath.

Nine years since I pawned my soul

for a glittering rush of chemical death.

But cravings still crawl like spiders in veins,

tap-dancing electric across my brain.

They whisper, just one hit, just one ride,

remember how goddamn good it felt to fly?

My jaw remembers grinding bone.

My blood remembers the overthrown throne.

My nerves remember lightning stitched

into a body overthrown.

Withdrawal was war with the lights turned bright,

sweat-soaked sheets every savage night,

shaking, puking, begging the floor

for a high I swore I didn’t want anymore.

Pills lined up like pastel lies,

promising sleep with porcelain eyes.

I swallowed constellations whole

just to quiet the riot inside my soul.

She laughed.

Insomnia counts my failures, not sheep,

keeps a ledger of secrets I buried deep.

She peels my eyelids back with spite

and forces me to fistfight night.

Addiction is not romance.

It is a parasite in a slow dance.

It will gut your future for twenty bucks

and teach your reflection not to give a fuck.

It will kiss you sweet with powder breath,

sell you god and hand you death.

Call it freedom, call it art,

while it digs its claws into your heart.

I am the Sleep Demon.

I steal sleep.

Because when I close my eyes

the cravings creep.

They pound like fists on a paper door,

begging me to be that ghost once more.

That wired-up prophet of broken teeth

who worshipped speed like a false belief.

But here is the truth, raw and obscene:

I survived every night in between.

Nine years clean.

Nine years mean.

Nine years ripping out the machine

that said I was nothing without amphetamine sheen.

Let insomnia spit in my face.

Let her try to drag me back to that place.

I will not crawl into that grave.

I fought too hard to be this brave.

I am the Sleep Demon.

I steal sleep.

But addiction does not steal me.

That victory, I keep.

— Lavender Rose