"Humans-- they're like a disease."

--said my boyfriend at the time. He wiped
a dark smudge of oil or some sort of grease 
on his pant leg as we rounded a corner out
of port authority bus terminal. He never
liked people. He looked at them with
the scowling eyes of a gosh hawk-- 
felt that everyone was parasitic--
parasites of food, of love, and of rivers.
I think I've always wanted to prove him wrong--
no just him-- but all the people who
think humans are something so distant
from creatures just
because we learned
to make cars and lace up sneakers
-- that's where we're mistaken.
I will always only find myself as a blood 
platelet-- push me fast in a taxi cab
headed to catch the Bieber at gate
19 or let me drift slow like a paper
boat in kayak on the Mullica river
in between furrow brow of the Pine Barrens.
I was never anything greater than
a red-bellied turtle-- who runs at the sight
of strangers-- how do you jump into the water?
How do you hide yourself like a tree frog?
So that we can only find you by
the muffled patterns of a mating call
long repeated-- compare my throat to a banjo
string and I can speak in the tone of
how a yellow warbler tells my kayak to
just leave it some peace today. It hasn't slept
well and it's been thinking about oceans.
I have to agree though-- 
Humans they're like a disease-- they are a disease 
Once you fall in love you never 
see humans as anything but rivers.