“I want to fling myself there, but even from this height I cannot see past the invisible distance where the Baltic is free from the net of the archipelago.”

‘I raise the vinyl shade and look out the plane window, golden clouds, deep blue sky, the sun in her circle at the top of the world. The light blazes across the darkened plane and the sleeping passengers and I pull the shade closed. On the video monitor our tiny illuminated plane flies over the Scandinavian Peninsula on its way to Stockholm.  All around me the Swedes slumber on. I have never been on a plane with such quiet passengers. They hummed like bees through the preflight and dinner and then tucked themselves under the thin, scratchy blankets and fell right to sleep. Beside me sleeps the man whose life I am crossing the Atlantic to join….’

Read more from ‘The Invisible Distance‘, first published in The Louisville Review 61, ©2007. Selected as a ‘Notable Essay’ in The Best American Essays 2008 (Ed. Adam Gopnik, ISBN 0618983228).

For more of Diane’s work, see Publications.