I Dreamed, the Morning Before Election Day

My husband and I were in the crosswalk by our daughter’s school and I could hear a car screeching and I shouted, Get out of the road! and he went one way and I went near the school, and other families scattered too, and then a car came squealing around the corner and slammed into a parked car I was standing by. A woman came out yelling about an “illegal” who was getting away whom she was chasing and I could see a man who could have been one of the students’ fathers (who knows if he was “illegal” or not) running away for any number of reasons, probably because someone was trying to kill him. I went up to the woman and cried, Don’t you see you almost killed me trying to get that person! and the cops took her away to question her but paraphernalia had spilled out of her car and people were picking it up and I shooed everyone away but one lady who might have been a neighbor and I said to her, What are you doing? Cut that out! People are trying to get us to not have each other’s backs and then they will come for us all. Why is it I have your back if they come for you but you don’t have mine or others? We have to have each other’s backs! And then I stumbled into town full of fear and worry and rage and it was wintertime and I climbed over massive pickup trucks hitched with boats to see a little holiday scene with a real reindeer running around a corral which delighted me, and then over to the right some restaurant workers were hanging around outside on their break, all different, including a young person and an old man, and they were listening to music and dancing and laughing and I thought, now this is how it should be.