Unreciprocated

The feeling that you’d die
without someone else
must be how polar bears feel
as the ice beneath their paws
cracks into smaller pieces
year by year—
insidious, but still alive
and they pad from glacier to glacier
until the edge yields too steep a drop.
Swim the rest,
don’t drown.
But if it’s someone else
who said they’d die without you,
the last flops of a fish on land
before it’s plopped back into the ocean
resurrected,
don’t you think it’s a bit too much
for my frame
to pull your weight–
surely you’d drown.
I’d rather drown.
I would drown,
let water close up above, solid,
until stars in my eyes blot out the sun
and there’s no air
no gulp of breath to release
a roar that’d shatter ice.