By Leni Gross Young
PROMPT — During COVID-19 ...
And the beat goes on. Or
we are beaten. So hard to
know. Daily lives go on, yet
“go” has different meaning –
outside, inside, six feet apart,
or under, all is adjusting itself to
the uncertainty and out of control-
ness. Like a game of chess where
no one can see the board, or the
opponents’ moves. Whose move
now? We could use a knight,
one in shining armor. A queen
would potentially do us well.
Checkmate on the king.
Please.
Someone said that at the end
of this there would be divorce
court and rehab marathons,
many new babies – perhaps
more than those to replace the
deaths, tolling, trolling the
internet. Collapses. We all should
have invested in Zoom. Who knew?
Only now, we know. Insiders on the
Hill probably all knew, but were
they smart enough to Zoom?
To check? Or mate?
Stories of coy pond mineral water
deaths and bleach swallowed, rationalized
by the unchecked king. Shelter in place,
a new phrase bandied about, urgency,
panic, frantic, economy versus people.
is it mother earth’s warning on our
arrogance? Apocalypse now? I envision
an ark. Who will be the chooser of
the two by twos? Now we are
all in check. If we make the right
moves, or, better, stay unmoving for
as long as necessary, maybe there will be
no checkmate on the human species. But
maybe it’s what we deserve? Pawn
that we are.
Leni Gross Young is an expressive therapist by training, so she loves the title of this journal and the meaning behind it. She has been in writing groups/writing circles of women for over thirty years and uses writing to clarify her thoughts, believing that the act itself taps into a different part of the brain than just thinking. Leni always had this image of alphabet cereal letters pouring out of her tilted, tapped head, from her ears and onto the page, forming new ideas and landscapes. As a practicing psychotherapist, Leni uses writing in therapy to help clients. She holds a B.A. from Dickinson College and an M.A. in Expressive Therapy from Lesley University.
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