Looking for a Happy Ending by Margaret Duda

Jack and Rose, madly in love,
are up to their necks in freezing water
after the Titanic hits an iceberg
and sinks on the TV screen
in our daughter’s guest room.

We hold onto each other
like life rafts during six weeks
of drug trials two hours away.
On the nights I stay, you insist
we watch the Titanic together,
memorizing meaningful lines.

Open your eyes.
I’ve got everything I need
right here with me.
When the ship docks,
I am getting off with you.
Do not let go of my hand.
I will never let go.

Did you hope that if we watched
it over and over again, the Coast Guard
would rescue Jack too and doctors
would find a cure for your cancer
and neither Rose nor I would
end up weeping in sorrow?

But life and movies don’t always
have happy endings, as we discovered.
In the freezing water, Jack helps Rose
onto a wooden plank for one
and hangs on as long as he can,
but finally dies of hypothermia.
Rose is saved by a returning lifeboat,
then rescued by the steamship Carpathia.
You die in your own bed at home,
leaving me to sail on alone
on our own ship of dreams.



Margaret Duda is a poet, short story writer (one made the distinguished list of Best American Short Stories), author of five non-fiction books, and is on the final draft of an immigrant family saga novel. She also traveled to forty countries and sold travel photographs to the New York Times for 10 years. She will have a book of poetry published by Kelsay Press next spring entitled I Come from Immigrants. The poem above is from that book.