What If We Can’t Fix This?
Is Dystopia all there is?
I’ve been dreaming about lost children. In one, I’m in a tall building looking down at a lone child on a beach, a child around six or seven walking slowly along the water’s edge, up and down, up and down, looking over at our building, possibly looking at me, or looking for me. It’s getting dark and I’m worried. I run to the door, and suddenly I’m on the sand, but the child is gone. Nowhere to be seen. I wake up.
In another there’s a child scurrying among garbage cans in an alley. In this one, it’s a little girl, no more than three. I’m at the entrance of the alley. Lights are shining behind me but it’s dark in the alley except for a single light above a door illuminating the spot where I see her. She disappears and reappears, disappears and reappears, but she doesn’t seem to see me. I call out but she doesn’t turn her head. I’m moving slowly toward her, willing my feet to move faster. She’s looking for something, throwing trash aside, until finally she stops, sits on the ground, lowers her head into her arms and wails. I rush toward her. And I wake up.
During my waking hours I worry, too. I worry about the lost children everywhere, but now I’m an American living in a country that forcibly takes children away from their parents.
