Six Feet Apart

The moon swells in a dark velvet sky.
Stars glit and gleam.
A blip of blinking lights goes by.

“First plane I’ve seen in weeks.”
Our shoes pad the pavement—
my mother and I.
Her chest heaves, like a plucked violin string,
its exhale drowned in the coos of lullabies
tangled in nearby trees.

“The test was negative,”
she told me days ago,
though her doctor suspects it’s wrong.

Our hands burn in our pockets, from a film of Lysol and bleach.
And my body quakes with the absence of her embrace.

A breeze thieved from an ocean,
dreams away from here,
seeps into our clothes.
Our breaths heavy—
separate—in their masks.

Brenna Cameron is an emerging writer and a medical student at the University of Colorado. She enjoys spending time outside skiing, camping, and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. You can follow her at bcamtravels.wordpress.com.