We were skeptical.
We were skeptical, or perhaps we had altogether too much optimism, but tomorrow the world could change. Tomorrow ballots would be cast and we could feel the sea change of a new era. The last shift we had not seen coming, with the century coiling around us. With this shift we pray for unknotting, with our breath already held in advance of what will strangle us, what will let us breathe out. Tomorrow, long time coming — the air tingled with it. We didn't know if the world would go ever back to the thing that we remembered. We didn't know then how unlike the world we knew the world would become in a few slow instants, how much worse it could get (because it couldn't get any worse, could it? We kept saying this. We kept saying this).