in-flight entertainment

titanic plays on two adjacent passenger screens;
two disparate scenes: on one, the dance, and the other, the death.

when i was younger, this movie epitomized my every romantic dream; sydney and i watched it through every day for a year.

i had a poster of leo when he was king of the world! at the bow, and i would kiss those smooth, ripe laminated lips against my mirror, hoping no one would see my toes so conspicuously beneath the door.

i would write his name in steam on the shower door.

leo, my first love, my wet dream: the distress signal exploding white behind his head as he gazed down with sacrificial finality on rose’s life boat.

no matter how many times i’ve seen it, i always root for it to end differently. even seeing it on two simultaneous screens: now they are hopeful new lovers triumphing against class odds, now she breaks his frozen fingers like a rusty lock.

now i am drowning in this dirty plane air, desperate to be the same 8-year old idealist who didn’t really know what distance was, who stopped the videotape before the iceberg hit.

 

 

 

About the Poet:  Chloe’ Skye is a poet, ESL teacher, and avid traveler. She moved to Czech Republic in 2014 on a Fulbright fellowship and speaks Czech and Hebrew. She has been published in Hanging Loose, Cliterature Journal, and Raven’s Perch, and keeps a travel blog called Chlohemian.

 

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