My talk focuses on recent literary attempts to leap over the political dead-end and the sense of hopelessness that permeates the present, and instead imagine a postcolonial future for Palestine, and specifically the city of Jaffa. Here I am attempting to probe the potential for “living well together,” teasing out potential futures, and point to the way some, both Palestinians and Israeli-Jews, engage in “forward dawning” by making the temporal leap through the present, imagine and bring into consciousness that which is not yet here. In fact, by articulating these imaginaries, those who engage with the future already, in a way, bring it into being, giving it shape and form through language and making these possible futures, potentialities, legible. The vantage points from which individuals are able to imagine these futures, however, are situated in the present and saturated in personal grief and a profound sense of injury. What I mean by that is to point to the fact that for many Palestinians, the idea of reciprocal exchange with their oppressors, let alone the potential for reconciliation remain unimaginable, and so is the notion of “living together” that transcends the present formations of coexistence under colonialism. As I will demonstrate, some eschew the mere idea of “living together” by imagining a future existence that excludes and elides the presence of Israeli-Jews. I will offer close readings of two short stories, by a Palestinian and an Israeli-Jew, both imagine a post-return reality in Jaffa, but with sharp difference in tone: while the Israeli-Jewish author’s engagement with the emergent future reality reflects hopefulness and sheer optimism, his Palestinian counterpart suggests that even when politically the path is open, “real” return remains impossible.