A Promise Through Time
We sit in deep recliners that buffer the effects of age, looking out the window at winter’s bare trees, the same ones we watch flourishing in spring. Mom and I wear matching blue wristwatches and check them regularly. She is 99 and counting. We worry about time. But at this moment, we have enough. We have now. Rubbing her wrinkled, still-strong palm along my smoother one, she wants to keep the day from ending. In a refrain she started a year ago, Mom promises, “I’ll always be with you.” Even in the not-too-far-off future when she is not. — Laura Sturza
The Other Donna
After experiencing a home foreclosure, a delightfully intense yet all-too-brief fling with a younger man and a grueling stint nursing an ex through a triple bypass, I concluded that 2022 was my “annus horribilis.” My shame and sadness left me isolated and depressed. After having what one might consider a mini breakdown in a Walmart bathroom, I made a phone call. I met Donna, my soul sister who shares my first name, at work. In 1995, she bought a house on her own and made it into a home. And, without hesitation, she offered me a place in it. — Donna Indahl
‘Remember Us Thus’
My worst fear: When we’re gone, we will be recorded in history as “good friends” like many unacknowledged queer couples throughout time. Rosemary writes her thesis at Princeton while I work in Manhattan. We are NJ Transit’s best customers. Connected through one-hour train rides and quiet sex in her dorm. Remember us thus: unambiguous, not friends, but lovers, possibly the gayest people alive. — Brittany Merrick
Not Quite “Sex and the City”
“He’s hot, but he’s not my husband,” I tell them. Four of us, single and nearly 30, meet weekly for wine in the West Village to talk about … men. We fancy ourselves “Sex and the City,” but it’s never that glamorous. Instead, we sit alone on our couches and swipe left, left, left. “Eh, try a second a date,” they say. I’m a hopeless romantic, a sworn algorithm hater. But I go on a second date. Then a third. And a fourth. At the next wine night, I admit, “I was wrong.” About the apps and, maybe, about the guy. — Rory Finnegan
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