For years, I have kicked you while we slept
under covers, in a pre-dawn echoing
with cries from preying owls.
For years, you’ve abided my midnight, REM-reflex shots to your
side, buttocks, shins, thighs.
I fight with my dreams: assassins and kidnappers and thieves and liars and thugs and hateful, hate-filled hate-oids bearing down upon me, you, everyone.
I kick and punch and bite and grapple but they keep coming.
And, when I wake, it is you in pain.
Still, you abide.
You do not strike back.
You know what dreams have come.
Now, you’re surrounded by a cocoon of pillows:
large, small, square and cylindrical.
You feel protected.
You feel isolated.
You abide.
And I kick you while we sleep.