I am wondering around on foot or in my head, worshipping the wild fruit trees growing outside this apartment in Louvier. I pick a sprouted coconut from the ground - I've heard raw foodists consider them delicacies. I manhandle a bunch of bananas, only to find them unripe like the green mango ornaments decorating tropical Christmas trees on the hill. I see papaya glowing neon orange some thirty feet up, and imagine my hero like a monkey with machete, shimmying safely into the sky.

I can feel a rainbow somewhere over my shoulder.

When I arrived, I thought the southern Caribbean to be a soft climate, much like southern California. Gentle on the organism, generous with the necessities of survival, spoiling humans with vitality and abundant health. When I first met Love, I thought the same thing. But I can see now, on the faces and in the paces of the local inhabitants, indeed too in myself after a mere five months/five days, that both are anything but.

Not a hard climate like I remember Glasgow, Scotland to be with the hearty people bearing a genetic will-to-survive and readiness for struggle. Nor, the extremist climate of Chicago and its population of urban Midwesterners who learnt that communal surrender is the only way to make it through a merciless 130-degree winter-to-summer temperature swing. No, Dominica's toll on life is not a tale of personal perseverance. It is not a story of navigating ups and downs. It is much subtler, but nonetheless destructive: it is the fable of exhaustion from forceful growth.

Like a meth-head bingeing to maintain the high. Like a triathlete training all year round. Like a workaholic without hesitation accepting more overtime. Like a lover who insists on everdeeper connection each time our lips touch, everytime we make love. How can one respond to relentless climates such as this? When I reach to give more I am confronted by my self-objectification. Giving to you only what I wish you to see, creating a character I perceive worthy of affection because somewhere I doubt you will stay if I show you all sides of me, yet at the same time, knowing I won't stay if I don't.

So I look to the jungle for how I wish to be - brave in forward motion, wild with life. Forceful growth might exhaust me into an early grave, but at least I will live amongst the fruit trees. At least I will die tasting sweet papaya on the tongue.

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