Poem Written In The Olympic Rain Forest

You please me,
so please be with me.

Let us- sabotage relationships
and fall in love so fast that the
falling of breaking up happens faster.

Rapidly like rapids flowing downstream only
to meet up with the hurricane whirlpool
sun-burned-skin-to-skin
forever building houses just to
knock, knock them down again.

I am alone,
so that I can be better-
to be with someone else?

I am lighting candles in the wake of my past,
and seeing this stream as my breadth,
my coven, my forgiveness.

I realize that I have laid down to sleep for months
and drank and smoked in the tide of all my troubles-
I have had fun,
I even had fun
when we were fighting.
I enjoyed the struggle.

I enjoyed it
until I couldn't take it any more so I started running:

Running so far that I forgot why I was running in the first place.
Running because I was so pissed.
Running 'till I was too tired to continue.
Running for days,
for miles on end
so that I could forget about this pain,

and maybe-

learn a new one.

I have learned that love is like entering oneself into
a fire pit.
It is like taking an axe to the heart and opening it up
similarly to that can of beef stew that I just swooned over.

I cannot, no longer can I-
open myself up this way.

To open yourself up and spew out love of 1,000 nights
spent by your side laughing-
to leave it open only to douse it with peroxide-
bleach.
Like you just had to make it sting so fucking bad that
it just might heal correctly when I finally muster up the willpower...

to put that Flintstones band-aid on.

I realize that I fall in love too easy,
I realize that I don't need an apology to forgive you.
And I don't need to hate men as I have resorted.
I don't need,
to put you and myself through a gauntlet of ups and downs
because I am too

god-damned insecure to really

be
in

love

with myself.

So I am just going to run.
I'm running into the back of my hand.
I am fleeing situations so swiftly you would think I were
a cougar cat-badger-bandit who belongs to the night.

but I'm not.

I am more like my hens.
I am awake with the sun, I cry for food and water
and I squawk to my hearts content
when I have just laid an egg.

But.

I invite myself to love.
To be open like a parachute
Into my own arms.

and to come home,

at night.

alone.
to sit on the edge of my bed,
contented.