This poem is taken from the first part of the book, Desolation and Epiphany, the one that focuses on the more somber aspects of the collection:

Sadness helps me sleep

but not as much as sin does.

When I feel panic leave my body,

when I’m cradled by my misery,

when I believe I am as lonely as

the evening’s final star,

there is not a single word

that comes to me,

except maybe “I miss you,”

that would be as comforting as

even a brush against

a hand so fair

I can believe

it reaches down from nowhere,

across the emptiness between us

to fill it instead inside me

and paint me dreamless rest.

Have you ever lain awake at night, maybe trying to fall asleep, maybe waking up and being unable to fall back asleep, and felt overwhelmed by negative emotions? Maybe you’ve felt lonely, anxious, scared, angry, empty, or in pain and you weren’t sure what to do about it. Maybe you’ve missed someone terribly and your heart cried out with no answer. Maybe you’ve used an unhealthy method to help fall asleep or simply roiled in your misery until it eventually passed. Finding no comfort in these dark moments is an awful feeling, but an experience all too familiar to many, especially in the hollow hours of the night and lonely hours of the morning.

This sense of hopelessness is the core of “Sadness helps me sleep” and a strong theme present in the Desolation half of my book. If this poem speaks to you, look forward to more melancholic verses, but also remember that this is only part of the story. In the second half, Epiphany, hope cuts through and poems of resolution and light outshine the darkness.