I was about to go

smoke on the roof

and think of you

when I remembered

the falling walruses

the way they heave

the bulk of their bodies

up cliffs before plunging

to their deaths

you and I once watched

a documentary on them

the walruses

the ice was melting

they had nowhere else to rest

hence the climbing

it broke me you know

watching their breathing stop

their bruised skin swollen

a deep purple spreading

hundreds of them

crushing each other

in their last moments

too scared to leave

each other behind

you had told me

the walruses at the top

hear the ones on the beach

flop back into the water

and of course they don’t

want to be left behind

so they jump off thinking

where are you going

I’m here

please don’t go without me

I remember wondering

how lonely they must have been

mouths watering from longing

the taste of it staining their tongues

their tusks

they don’t have

the best eyesight

they don’t know how

much it will hurt to fall

to die in a sea of corpses

the waves soft with salt and foam

warm with your blood

still a hushed murmur still

breathing, alive

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Sambhavi Dwivedi is a writer and student at Rutgers University—New Brunswick studying English literature and creative writing. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Westchester Review, MudRoom, Parentheses Journal and Door Is A Jar, and her criticism appears in Words Without Borders. She reads fiction for Guernica.