I VOTED. BUT…
I did not vote for ICE pulling people off the street corner near where we used to live, near the pharmacy where you used to get your blood pressure pills.
Nor did I vote for a Justice Department politicized against perceived enemies.
No. A hundred times, no! I did not vote for any of what’s happening.
Mom, you would have called me the morning after the election. You always called the morning after anything momentous. And this was, either way.
You would have said something about the man, something contemptuous that you kept for people who lied without even trying.
I have been rehearsing what you’d say for months now, in your voice, which I am already starting to get wrong in small ways. I hate that!
I can’t believe you’re not here for me to talk to and laugh with.
Sometimes, I feel my bitterness building, bile-like.
So what happened, Mom? Let's start with Octavia Butler. To paraphrase her, there’s no single answer, no magic bullet, only thousands of us choosing, and we could be one of the thousands who choose to do one thing.
You see, I believed what Butler said. And on some level, I also believed you’d always be no farther away than at the other end of a phone.
Both of those turned out to be dependent on certain conditions being met. In your case, death is a misery of a condition.
I am one of the thousands Butler wrote about.
I did what I could with my one ballot, my one voice that was supposed to add up to something with all the others.
So, it didn’t add up the way I needed it to.
I don’t know what to do with doing the right thing and it mattering so little.
I don’t know what to do with this twin grief: you, and this.
Some nights I say it out loud in bed: what I would tell you, the words you would use in response; both voices are mine now, doing the work of two.
Author’s Note
There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.—OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
My mother’s been gone for some time now, and I still find myself thinking about what she might have said about the last US general election.
I found the Octavia Butler quote about there being no single answer, only thousands of us choosing to be an answer, and for a long time I believed it, naively, maybe. But then again, I didn’t want to think about my mother not being around anymore. I believed she would always be here for us, either a room or a phone call away. Neither the belief in the Butler quote nor the one about my mother held.
This isn’t really a prose poem about politics, though politics are part of it, and I won’t pretend otherwise. It’s about what happens to disappointment and anger when the person you’d turn to isn’t there to help diffuse it. I didn’t try to find a solution for that.
Upcoming…
Five haiku:
LOOK SEAWARD, 29 August 2026
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