After this election, we must actively ask ourselves and each other what we can do in the after we now live in. Must it be an undoing or a redoing? Must we be saved or do the saving? What is left? Do the old abstractions work anymore, or might we invent new ones?

In the wake of what has happened, it is easy to fixate on answers and what to do in the after we’ve been thrown into. Searching for the “right answers” in a world of festering hate and rapid unravel will create an overworked and overwhelmed mind that eventually becomes complacent and paralyzed. The answers are not the most important, but the conversation, questioning, and discussion are. To find what matters, we must first ask each other questions. We must come together to combat hate.

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Discussing and questioning how to improve our country, whether by saving, undoing, redoing, destroying, creating, etc., is what gives us hope and confidence. If we don’t stay together, all that is left is loss. Mere answers aren’t strong enough anymore; it matters, it really does. Is it a statement or a question?

Read Margot Wizansky’s poem “What Does it Matter” in the “After” section of the new About Place Journal issue “Shaping Destiny:” https://aboutplacejournal.org/…/after/margot-wizansky/

Art by: AUSTIN FARBER