Study of Amelia Earhart’s Death
by aimee seu

Runestone, volume 3

Study of Amelia Earhart’s Death

If Amelia Earhart drowned,
her body would gradually ruin
in the depths bound
to her seat turning
as soft as paper pulp
gently torn by the tides by
now and sowed
throughout the oceans,
one speck in the curdling foam loping
along the shore, one filtered
into the mouth of an oyster
consolidated into a pearl.
Dust of her body in the bodies of the fish and whales and
albatross.

Drinking cigarettes and black coffee, my boyfriend’s insides are probably like an abandoned lot people burn trash and car tires in. But from here his skin looks like snow no one’s touched. I decide the best way to die would be lying on your back under your lover, staring up at his face.

If the plane came
apart in midair, sheet metal
peeling back like chaff,
her alone above the silent
landscape of cloud
little alarms going off
in the cockpit
before combustion maybe
she thought of a
night her body and somebody’s
unfolded and bloomed
like time-lapse footage of spring.
But then,
maybe nothing
ever compared to
to fly.

In the elevator the doors open, some people get off and everyone shuffles to fill the space. My fifth day thinking about Amelia. Samuel proposed six times before she finally allowed it. In a letter she refers to her marriage as a partnership with “dual control,” as if describing the latest aviation technology. I have concluded

She dragged herself
from the sinking wreckage onto
the beach
of a deserted island,
stuck with shrapnel and burned
coughing up
saltwater and
blood she laid herself down
on her back
under the sky
staring up.