Everyone’s going to die tonight.
I’m sweating fever under blankets.
Momma’s in the bed beside me.
She hasn’t moved in three days.
Dad’s in the critical care unit,
huffing oxygen on a ventilator.
For Momma’s seventieth birthday.
We came to conquer Grand Canyon.
Now, we’re stranded in Prescott,
where we sip Pedialyte and pray.
We thought we were invincible
until we all caught Covid 19.
Brendan Praniewicz earned his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State in 2007 and has subsequently taught creative writing at San Diego colleges. He has had poetry published in “From Whispers to Roars,” “Tiny Seed Journal,” “That Literary Review,” and “The Dallas Review.” In addition, he received second place in a first-chapters competition in the Seven Hills Review Chapter Competition in 2019. He won first place in The Rilla Askew Short Fiction Contest last year.