Sleep is supposed to happen to us without effort, which is why its absence is so hard to describe. 리나's «(In) Somnus» solves the problem by turning insomnia into a failing love affair. Sleep becomes a woman who comes and goes as she likes, and the speaker is the one left at home, waiting.
The title already carries the idea. *Somnus* is the Latin word for sleep, and "insomnia" is built from the same root with a negating prefix in front. By putting "(In)" in brackets, the poem makes the loss visible: remove the bracket and sleep is there, keep it and sleep is gone. The Roman Somnus was a god, yet the poem's Sleep is a "flighty temptress." The title names the old figure and the poem gives us a lover in his place.
The poem is one unbroken block of twenty-seven lines, with no regular meter and no stanza breaks, so the complaint never pauses, much like a sleepless night. Line lengths swing widely. "Only stopping by to caress me with a featherlight touch," drifts on and on, while "Sleep, thou art a whore." is short and hard. The archaic "thou art" makes the insult sound like a formal curse, and the crude word at its end sounds like someone too exhausted to be careful. The anger doesn't last. The next line is "One that I miss with each passing day," and the speaker's bitterness turns straight back into longing.
The poem is also built on shifts of address. At first Sleep is "she," described to us the way you might talk about an ex to friends: "Often I hear of how she comforts others." From the line "Sleep, do you remember when we were young?" the speaker turns to "you," and the tone becomes intimate and nostalgic. The word "Sleep" begins five lines (1, 10, 14, 18 and 24), and each time the speaker is trying a different approach: scorn, memory, regret, surrender. Rhyme is loose, but an *-ay* sound spreads through the second half ("days," "away," "astray," "day"). The phrase "stay away" appears twice with opposite meanings. In youth, "we couldn't stay away" from each other. At the end, "I know that you will stay away."
The imagery is physical and domestic. The bed is "cold," the nights are "cold" and "alone in the dark," so sleep is imagined as a missing body next to the speaker. Her touch is "featherlight," so slight it never takes hold. The suggestion of a pillow is hard to miss, and the promise she whispers is "empty." The pills that "others reccomend" are framed as a way to "make her favor me once more," which makes treatment sound like bribing someone who no longer loves you. The best image comes near the end. Sleep tells the speaker "not to wait up," and he or she waits anyway, "Waiting for you to come home." This points to the cruel logic of insomnia. Waiting for sleep is what keeps the speaker awake, so the faithfulness is also the problem. "I always stay awake" is both the complaint and its cause.
The ending refuses comfort. Two lines begin "I know," and the last, "and I know you won't come back," is made entirely of one-syllable words, as flat and final as a door closing. Yet the speaker's behaviour has contradicted this knowledge all through the poem, since they are still up and still listening for the key in the lock. The poem never settles whether the speaker has accepted the loss or only says so.
Nothing about the writer or the circumstances of writing comes with the text, so the speaker is best read as a voice the poem builds, not as a confession. The poem is worth reading because insomnia is a common, lonely experience, usually met with advice and medication, and here it is given the vocabulary of desire, jealousy and grief. Sleep has long been a comfort that can't be forced, and the poem makes that powerlessness feel as personal as being abandoned.