“Social Distances” by L.B. Browne
There is a man
wearing dark glasses
and a blue paper surgical mask
in the fluorescent sun of the grocery store.
Hey buddy, 6 feet!
a young woman shouts
as he backs up, nearly touches her,
outrageous,
she does not see
the white cane he slides in small arcs at his feet,
tip tapping the way
down ravaged empty aisles.
There is a woman
with a 3-day-old cough
and a nasal drip that runs down the back of her throat,
too sore now for speech.
Go home, isolate!
the doctor says
as he waves her through his office door,
and she nods and coughs
and makes her way back
to a paint-worn wooden bench
in Fort Greene Park, and each night
snores beneath smog-hidden stars.
There is a girl
sent home from school
when teacher says school is no safe place,
and each day at home she watches her father strike her mother’s face.
Go to your room!
he warns,
and though she can no longer see
she can still hear a sound
like raw meat slapping raw meat
like a woman’s final tears
like her teacher’s voice on the last day of class –
stay home or people will die.
There is a boy
reading the news on his mother’s phone
about a virus
you can catch but can’t see.
How do you know then, if it’s got you!
he asks his mother
and he worries there must be other things
he can’t see
like ghosts and the lungs inside his own chest and that feeling
in his throat when his mother forgets to leave his light on at night,
and he worries there must be times like these, when a strike of sudden light
spins the whole world panic blind.
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L.B. Browne is a writer and MFA candidate in The New School’s Creative Writing
program. She is also a physician and graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. She has written for several online news outlets, including ABC News. She is currently at work on her first short story collection.
