Libby Foster
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
It appears the kids are safe to this
Indecisive on life
Invest in something disaster proof
Coming back home to cozy ruins
Has your heart stopped fluttering
for the things you felt in freedom
See me for the first time
since graduation
scream
DO I NEED TO REMIND YOU
OF THE FINITE NATURE OF LIFE
from six feet away
Feeling a little feverish
The small of my back
curves
as you step closer
Know I’m not your patient zero
We fight over test kits
to prove we’re both positive
Can’t use strangers as defense mechanisms
in this time of social distancing
Fantasies of forced quarantine
Forgot how time stops between four walls
We dry cough in the darkness
Holding each other through cold sweats
Wake up with sore throats
Is this the kind of sickness
We can’t forget about in the morning
Severe cases are starting to appear in the youth
Once every hundred years
a pandemic forces us to feel something
Libby Foster is a freshman at the University of Alabama studying English on a National Merit Scholarship. Her poems are forthcoming in The Blount Truth, a University of Alabama literary journal.
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