I told her, “I’m the perfect traveler. I don’t get airsick. I pack light. I research the culture in advance. I’m not leaving you, because I always come back.”

She said, “I believe you, but this is a nine-hour flight, I’m not your wife, and I’d like to be reseated.”

David Galloway is a writer and college professor of Russian. Born and raised in Maryland, for the past twenty-five years he has lived in upstate New York. He is the author of poyms for people (Kelsay Books, 2021), and his poetry and essays have most recently appeared in Atlanta Review, the American Journal of Poetry, Typehouse, Permafrost, and Penn Review.