Serotinous Poem by Ben Partenay

I can feel you at night
in the soft sheets like bed bugs.
You want my flesh and I want you gone.
Were you dreaming when you bit me?
Was it happiness you craved, and
did you find it?

I still feel you at night
tossing in my bed, the
thousand teeth in cool sheets.
I have no dreams anymore because
you won't let me.
I wake up with marks on my day.
I scratch and claw at myself
in the shower, in the crowds,
in the stairway at the hospital.
I feel you in the way
a tree feels fire.

Are you dreaming? I
hope you are.
And we? We are
all trees
and similarly
fire. And you?
You were my fire.
From you
I grew.