“Greetings from Mars,” I write on five postcards from the insane hotel we’re staying in. My son rolls around on the planetary carpet, singing in a high-pitched voice, trying to make me laugh.

We’ve been partying all night. “Mom, that Russian slot machine has your name on it,” he says.

When we checked in, the front desk clerk asked me about my married status. “You need to check it in the box right here,” she said. “Married, Divorced, Single.”

I could feel my son’s mood heating up next to me. Could feel his face redden. “Fuck this,” he said.

“My husband died a few weeks ago,” I explained.

“Whoa. Okay. Then, ‘widow’ is what you should say. You can just write that in.”

::

But Vegas itself is infectious. Nothing as it seems. I can laugh while drizzling rain from my eyes.

“Mom, we’re having a ball here,” my son admits, and it’s true. He’s a year too young but I share beer with him and let him choose which dumb outfit I’ll wear to the Stratosphere.

The Hawaiian shirt he’s wearing is the one Bob gave him for middle school graduation. Our son smiled that day with bee-stinger confidence. Now he doesn’t match the decor.

::

In the Orbit Cafe at noon, there’s a lot to love. Our waitress’s tentacle hair, gravity toast that floats, seeing my son with his moon-glow eyes and a sunrise smile Bob would have ordered up.

I recall our honeymoon here in Vegas.

How I lay on my back, knees in the air. “I’m cooking up our kid.”

“Stick a pin in that thought,” Bob said, shuffling into the bathroom which resembled a space capsule.

I pretend he’s in there now. Close my eyes and watch myself hover over Earth. After all, we’ve landed here again. When I close my eyes, we’re all about to win.

Meg Pokrass

is the author of four collections of flash fiction, most recently Alligators at Night (Ad Hoc Fiction: The Short-Short Story Press, 2018), and one award-winning collection of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas (2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize). Her writing has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best Small Fictions 2018, edited by Aimee Bender (Braddock Avenue Books), and in two Norton anthologies of flash fiction: Flash Fiction International and New Micro. Her recent work has appeared in Electric Lit and Tin House. She is the founder of New Flash Fiction Review and co-founder of San Francisco’s Flash Fiction Collective reading series, and serves as Festival Curator for the Flash Fiction Festival, U.K.

Author’s website: http://megpokrass.com/