“I could not comprehend how love for someone other than me could be called love for me. Love sees only the beloved, I believed. Two faces turned toward each other alone.”

“As a witness at the door of your parents’ room, you learned every argument is a circling around the same unnamed problem. A raised voice is a shunned voice is a measured voice.”

On the train back to Grand Central, the city itself did not feel enough for me. I longed for the presence of another human being—a person I can touch, feel, and shelter with—to save me from the coming isolation of the second wave.

When can I see you? we asked each other, but we really wanted to know, when can we be in the same room? When can we kiss, touch, and hold one another? How long must we emulate the sexless lives of hermits? A few more weeks, a few more months, a whole year?