Beauty, imagination and enchantment in a COVID-19 world

Everything about being in love is supersonic-personified. I don’t know yet if I can change the world, but today for a smart change I am going to try. I am not going to explain to my inner girl child anything about the torment of the world, I am going to talk about finding the joy, the giddiness of falling in love with your soulmate, falling in love again with humanity, falling in love again the with the universe like I did when I first read A Brief History of Time. You are the master of the universe, I am the master of the universe. See what I did there. I made a breakthrough. I broke through the “human stain”and the inequality of inequality and it feels as if I, yes I just invented the belief of gravity. Its urgency and its push and its pull.

Its sway and roar. The fact that it is a champion and a well-built machine. It feels as if I invented the sea. I remember the sea of my childhood. Teenage couples on the beach.

Married couples on the beach holding hands and with their children. I remember that every day I went to the beach how spectacular the people were. I wanted their happiness. To want happiness is never feeling fulfilled. I certainly never felt fulfilled as a child, growing up. It was tough. It was insurmountably hard to find myself. It took the better part of twenty odd years to find the purpose and meaning in life, in my own life. It took me twenty odd years to fall in love, to fall in love again with me. And realise this. That you should always be the most important person in your life. I don’t know if I can change the world yet. These I know, I know, are not the last words I have. These words are my own. They belong to the elements and dimensions and particles of the universe. It is exclusive to nature.

To the wind and the rain. These words are amazing to me.

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Uncomplicated, not as complicated as I am. Simple, not as complex as I am. Have I said yet, that love, all of love, the return to love, the spiritual awakening of love is supersonic-personified. I am trying not to think of COVID-19. My life is a dream with words in it.

When I wake up it turns into reality. It turns me into a storyteller.

It turns me on a good day into a poet, a diary page, an entire journal filled from beginning to end, and a wristwatch. This is me, waiting for my turn to talk in that moment when I met you, and COVID-19 that turned the world into a pandemic.

So, I release my potential into the world as an empath and as a storyteller, as a poet and an epic communicator. Whether there is love and injustice in the world, know this, know this sweet and indefinable truth, that we are all inter-connected. That we are all loved. That we are all spiritual disciples. That we are all poets. For me, words are like an art. Art is what I know. So, I write these words to you, VIrgil, because you have become all my reasons, my art, my philosophy for living. You have inspired me to greatness in my own life and most all, you make me laugh with your cute self and your noble smile, and your forward-thinking ideas that are innovative and phenomenal and all I want to do is inspire greatness in your own life.

Abigail George
Abigail George
Abigail George is an award-winning short story writer, author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and an award-winning poet. She is a Pushcart Prize, two-time Best of the Net nominated, Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize longlisted, Writing Ukraine Prize shortlisted, Identity Theory's Editor's Choice, Ink Sweat Tears Pick of the Month poet/writer. In 2021, her writing was recognised by Afrocritik among the 20 Remarkable African Essays. In 2023, she was the winner of the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Writing Ukraine Prize; in 2024, her poem, “Rebirth” received an Honourable Mention in the New Coin Poetry Prize, and in 2025, she was shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize. In 2025, she was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize and her poems were selected for the Erbacce Journal. She is a two-time recipient of grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, one from the Centre of the Book in Cape Town and another from ECPACC in KuGompo City. She won a national high school writing competition in her teens. She was interviewed by BBC Radio 4, for AOL.com, the USA Today Network, The Tennessean, and Radio Ikrikya in Algeria. Her writing has appeared in Agbowo, Botsotso, Critical Muslim, Jalada, Kalahari Review, LitNet, Ons Klyntji, Piker Press, The Eastern Province Herald, The Ovi, and others. She was educated in Port Elizabeth and Swaziland. She is the Contributing Editor for African Writer Magazine based in New Jersey, and an editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing situated in Zimbabwe. Her latest book is "Did You Get Married to Her When I was in the Mental Hospital". Find it on Amazon and at the ZamaShort shop. Find her on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Substack, and Instagram @abigailgeorgepoet.