Three days post-engagement, with a ring to prove it.
Life-Changing Burritos
From Austin, we headed west. For two weeks, my best friend and I were on a journey of self-exploration, an adventure through the vast American landscape that would find us in a multicolored haze, and an event that would bond us for life. All of this came about because of one thing: a burrito so good we had to drive to California to get it. If it weren’t for that burrito we wouldn’t have found ourselves in a purple sunset, sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon with a question that would change our lives forever. She said yes. — Jared Owenby
Our relationship was reassembled with tape.
Torn Up
“I’m leaving you,” she said. Regrettably dramatic, I yanked the photo from its frame and tore it into pieces. Taken the night we first met, the photo was irreplaceable. I imagined tears, then a change of course, reconciliation. Instead, she discarded the shredded pieces in a wastebasket. It’s true what they say: The heart can break. Eventually, I reclaimed the pieces and, with tape, carefully reassembled the image. She did leave. Months passed. My heart mended. The patchwork is in a frame behind the couch we still sit on and reminds us of the fragility of love and its worth. — Susan Anderson
Selfie taken on the corner of 22nd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City.
Black Gay Me
After the breakup, we spent every Thanksgiving, birthday and Christmas together. Close enough to touch, legs inches apart. We were still dying of AIDS in the ’90s, but I always thought no, not Michael. When he died I wondered who would love black gay me like that ever again. It’s taken me 20 years to see what he saw in me. That big gorgeous life was too beautiful to be in ruins. Damn it, Michael. And yet I can still hear you saying, “Get off the cross, Mary. Somebody else needs the wood.” Just as close as two legs almost touching. — Wesley Rowell
My two men and I with a bigger tripod at SpaceX.
Our Love Tripod
On the eve of the new millennium, I fell in love with Andrew, a dashing English ad executive. Inconveniently, I didn’t fall out of love with Scott, an American architectural photographer and my longtime partner. Our dilemma resulted in an unexpected and enduring romance: a V-shaped love triangle sans vows and offspring. Born English, now a naturalized American, I am the hinge in our harmonious household of three: I sleep with both men, they each sleep only with me. We share everything else: home, finances, friends, vacations, life-threatening calamities. As Scott says, our tripod is more stable than a bipod. — Kate Holt
Our tidy yard after my mother’s gardening.
Mother Knows Best
After I asked my husband to leave, after nights of holding my weeping daughters, after clumps of hair came out in my hands, my mother came to visit. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. In sickness and in health!” The next morning, I found her in my scraggly yard. Digging, weeding, sowing. When her stay was over, the tidiness rattled me: fresh mulch, trimmed trees, perfectly rounded shrubs. In planting perennials I thought she was saying, “These will return, in spite of you.” But maybe, instead: “Here, this will be easier.” — Lisa Mecham
