A while back Haley taught me the Yiddish word bashert. For those who don’t know, it generally translates to something that is destined. Something meant to be. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that idea. A lot of time being skeptical of it. I’ve always been a bit of an academic. My deeply held beliefs are rooted in science and reason. And so I’ve been suspicious of the idea of destiny. But still, it is a romantic notion, and I’m a romantic at heart. I’ve been captivated, I suppose, by this conception of a soulmate. In some ways I have felt its weight. I have turned it over, considered its sides. I continue to investigate it. I think most of you know Haley and I met on OkCupid. Internet dating has always felt decidedly unromantic to me, but the inability to mingle in person at that time forced my hand. In fact Haley occasionally ribs me about how my profile coldly began with, “the second we can go back to meeting each other in person, I’m deleting this profile.” Haley’s profile didn’t have a lot of verbiage on it, some mentions of musical taste and political leanings. A couple photos—some beautiful ones at the Lake, likely taken by Annette, and a candid of Haley sitting on a step wearing a silly animal hoodie. It wasn’t the type of profile I typically would have been drawn to—it lacked the narrative fullness that was usually attractive to me. But her face in that goofy pic—there was something `so familiar in her smile. Something in her eyes I felt connected to. So I swiped right. I thought little about that feeling in the moment, but I think of it often now, because it continues to reoccur. Haley and I spent those first few weeks texting voraciously—casting our messages in electronic bottles across the vast and choppy sea of a global pandemic. Our banter was flirty and playful. To my complete surprise, getting to know Haley was easy. She was sweet and funny and curious. I was enamored right from the start, and in a way that came on wholly different from past crushes. And there was that feeling again, and again, and again with her—a feeling of familiarity despite our knowing so very little about each other. It happened on our first date when she came over and right at the height of Covid—indoors and pre-vaccine—we took off our masks. The decision felt inevitable and safe, at a time when the world was anything but. Our conversation was effortless and jocular and I made us lasagna for dinner that night—the recipe was my grandmother’s, and one my mom taught me. It happened during our FaceTime phone chats when Haley was working in Michigan and I was here in Chicago—our first three months of dating were long distance and whether we would split up or stick it out felt obvious. Fated. I can’t say for certain why I have felt this way. I continue to prod the idea of destiny. But destiny doesn’t seem to mind, it keeps happening to me anyway. Haley and I are surrounded by examples of love and family. We are a part of that too, a product of that. I think bashert isn’t just an acknowledgment of the mystical connection two people have, but also the revelation that we are never just two people. The love we have for each other is a reflection of our families, who connect us to a shared foundation through our traditions. These connections are so strong they can feel pre-determined. Some people call that religion. Some call it destiny. It can feel magical but, really, it isn’t. There’s no trick to it at all. It is a practice we devote our lives to & foster through our continued commitment to each other. The magic comes from the patience, the kindness, the love that blossoms out of that decision, time again and again and again, to turn toward each other and not away.

July Cristin O’Keefe Aptowitz The figs we ate wrapped in bacon. The gelato we consumed greedily: coconut milk, clove, fresh pear. How we’d dump hot espresso on it just to watch it melt, licking our spoons clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat, the salt we’d suck off our fingers, the eggs we’d watch get beaten ’til they were a dizzying bright yellow, how their edges crisped in the pan. The pink salt blossom of prosciutto we pulled apart with our hands, melted on our eager tongues. The green herbs with goat cheese, the aged brie paired with a small pot of strawberry jam, the final sour cherry we kept politely pushing onto each other’s plate, saying, No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours. How I finally put an end to it, plucked it from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth. How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart. How good it felt: to want something and pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

Easy as Falling Down Stairs Dean Young To always be in motion there is no choice even for the mountain and its frigid cousins floating on the oceans that even sluggish seethe and moan and laugh out loud at their own jokes. How "like the human heart" can be said of pert near everything, pint of fizz, punching bag because all moves: the mouse, the house, the pelt of moon corresponding to the seas (see above) (now get back here) of mood, sadness heaving kelp at the sunken city's face, gladness somersaulting from the eaves like a kid's drawing of a snowflake. No matter how stalled I seem, some crank in me tightens the whirly-spring each time I see your face so thank you for aiming it my way, all this flashing like polished brass, lightning, powder, step on the gas, whoosh we're halfway through our lives, fishmarkets flying by, Connecticut, glut then scarcity, hurried haircuts, smell of pencils sharpened, striving, falling short, surviving because we ducked or somehow got some shut-eye even though inside the hotel wall loud leaks. I love to watch the youthful flush drub your cheeks in your galloping dream. Maybe even death will be replenishment. Who knows? Who has the time, let's go, the unknown's display of emeralds closes in an hour, the fireworks' formula has changed, will we ever see that tangerine blue again, factory boarded up then turned into bowling lanes.

Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance Ada Limón Sometimes, I think you get the worst of me. The much-loved loose forest-green sweatpants, the long bra-less days, hair knotted and uncivilized, a shadowed brow where the devilish thoughts do their hoofed dance on the brain. I’d like to say this means I love you, the stained white cotton T-shirt, the tears, pistachio shells, the mess of orange peels on my desk, but it’s different than that. I move in this house with you, the way I move in my mind, unencumbered by beauty’s cage. I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me than much else. I’m wrong, it is that I love you, but it’s more that when you say it back, lights out, a cold wind through curtains, for maybe the first time in my life, I believe it.