A Fly on the Plane

In 11C, and there was a fly, buzzing and whirring, and the woman next to me was telling me that to stay home with your children is to answer a higher calling and that poetry that does not rhyme is not poetry. I kept pointing at my magazine. I want to read, I told her. I'm sorry, I said and ordered water with no ice. My husband will be fat from all the pizza, she told me, and it hung in the air, the silence very real. I turned the page of my magazine. After a bit, the fly landed on her hand; it seemed a long minute before she swatted it away.