The last time I flew over the Midwest, a number of states
were erased. The Great Lakes were cinched
much closer, until Green Bay and Buffalo
became neighbors, lending each other
Sugar Maples. Over the intercom crackling came
the voice of the pilot, which told us we needed
to make an emergency landing. He was, now, in short,
our god. Our monkey having seen monkeys do
enough times to be ready. But enough time passed,
and we were all still in the air, low but motoring by
shorelines wrestling rye and infirm cedar. I
figured I must have misheard or else was
just dreaming. I watched a surprising
number of stadiums pass below. They were glitzed
with ads, sponsor-washed, and increasingly
empty. Then the right wing dipped down, and the left
lurched in awkward response. My life did not
flash before me, but the titles of books
I’d meant to write did. Among them: For the Record:
Asterisks We’re Willing to Take. Eventually, we
touched down near some woods, barely smoothly
enough. Some of us looked up at the reading lights
to say thank you before stepping off the plane
and into our roles. The children took care
of the crying. The mothers took care
of their children’s crying. Meanwhile, a handful of fathers
tried to play it cool, but misspoke when they agreed
they were unnerved. The businessmen, still looking fresh
off the iron, crunched us like numbers. The lawyers
checked their phones and invested themselves
in their suits. The attendants set up a table
with our bagged lunches on it. In dumb hunger
I approached, and recognized an old student of mine
along the way. She couldn’t find her lunch, or else
her sandwich had fallen apart at the hands
of turbulence—I can’t remember. I offered her
one of mine, since, for some unknown reason,
I had packed five just for myself. Behind us,
two women were at odds with the day, with each other.
The news had trained one of them to panic. The news
had trained the other to find this routine: landing a broken
plane is like riding a bicycle, she said. I thought this might be
a teachable moment for my student, but I just stared ahead
and kept eating, jelly falling from my sandwich with each
generous bite. After all, I was just the guy with too much on his plate.