Atia Sattar

On Airplanes, I Think about Dying

If you search online for whether you are more likely
to die in an airplane crash or a shark attack

the answers are unclear and misleading. Statistics
don’t always measure one’s chances of exposure.

If you search for how likely you are to die
of stage four lung cancer, the answers

are much more definitive:
ninety-five percent within five years.

My father took to watching Air Disasters
as he lay in bed secured to an oxygen mask

while the carwash down the street from me turned
baby blue for Shark Week. Every detail included

a t-shirt and sunglasses, but I couldn’t
bring myself to watch Shark Week that year.

Now my daughter teaches me the ways of sharks—
thresher, goblin, wobbegong, greenland, tiger, great white.

Her favorite is the mako, the fastest at forty-five
miles an hour, but hardly comparable to an airplane.

When she was a fry inside me, conceived
the way of most sharks, we flew

across the country three times
in three months to visit her failing grandpa.

We’d arrive unscathed each time
but she’d still thrash something fierce.

Back then, I thought she heaved
her gristle against my bones to help keep me afloat.

I have since learned sharks are repelled
by the scent of their own dead kin.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-American poet whose writing has been supported by PEN America, Anaphora Arts, the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow and Hypatia in the Woods. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Smartish Pace, Comstock Review, West Trade Review and Rogue Agent (Pushcart Nomination), among others. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. Find her at www.atiasattar.com.