“Do you remember this?” I trace grooves in the plaque. An engraved spaceship glints, perpetually airborne.

Dad’s eyes remain closed, lips parted.

“We went to Cape Canaveral. You shook the president’s hand.”

Nurses appear and vanish.

I wonder if Dad feels like he’s floating. Preparing to sail into the unknown.

Emily Roth is a librarian and writer based in Chicago. Her writing has recently been published by Exposition Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and TL;DR Press, and she was shortlisted for the 2020 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction.