Thin Air

by Beth Sherman

Only three minutes elapse before the baby starts bawling. Take-off triggers it. Ears popping. Pain. That unnerving sensation of tilting, pushing you back while the plane hurtles forward. You hate flying too, you want to tell the baby, who’s seated in her mother’s lap across the aisle, screaming. But when your father dies in Miami and you’re in New York, there’s no other way to get to the funeral quickly.

Out the window nothing but clouds, torn scraps of vapor.   

The baby cries harder. You order a gin and tonic, time your sips between the baby’s sobs. Poor darling, the mother croons. There is no father. Maybe they’re on their way to visit him. Maybe they’re divorced, the baby the axe that caused the guillotine to slice their marriage open. Maybe she chose to be a single mother. Long nights staring out the window, holding the baby, saying hush little one hush.  

Hubris to be speeding through thin air, the earth a distant ball spinning so slowly no one notices. Your father preferred buses. If God had wanted us to fly, etcetera. Once, when you were six, he took you on a bus from Miami to Atlanta so you could see your mother again. Out the window: farms, fields, cows, things you could touch. The clouds a grey blip above, where they should be. The ground visible from the window, teeming with insects and growing things. You remember turning the word mother over in your mouth. It tasted bad, like milk gone sour. She’d left without even a goodbye hug. But your father said it would be alright and you believed him. He held your hand until he fell asleep and you watched his breath leaving and entering his mouth like a lullaby, both of you moving through grassland together.   

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BETH SHERMAN has had more than 200 stories published in literary journals. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025.She’s also a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.   

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