This essay compares two photographs that depict two pairs of Black women. The first image is undated with subjects not identified; the second image features the late artist/architect Amaza Lee Meredith and her partner, the late educator Dr. Edna Meade Colson. As part of a reflection on travel, love, and intimacy, each photograph serves as a conduit for reckoning with the complexity of a Black southern female subjectivity, one in which queer romance and desire might be centered. Both images prompt reflection on lives lived, in some ways, beyond the legibility of normative expectations.

Lisa A. Lindsay grapples with what it means to be a historian after experiencing memory loss from a brain aneurysm.

I've never wanted to get married, but if I ever did it should probably be to Luis. I can't even tell you why exactly. It's just something I know. Luis came to the United States at age seventeen, not because his family was poor, but because his father thought he needed to get off of his butt. It was sort of like when students from here go to Europe for the summer—an adventure abroad. His father told him to stay until he had earned enough money to buy a new pickup truck. This adventure abroad turned into seven years.