When Marías first called out for submissions for this issue in October 2020, the United States was already about eight months into pandemic mode. We were deep into devastation of once-in-a-century magnitude. Yet we never could have predicted that in the days, weeks, and months to follow, we would be faced with still more horrors that would shake us to our core. Reader, we continue to live in a harrowing time. We continue to shoulder burdens, the very real consequences of death from incompetencies and transgressions of government structures around the world. There continues to be loss. It isn’t easy to create in perpetuating duress, so we owe a great amount of thanks to the creatives who submitted and chose to keep their pieces in this issue. We listened, in the quiet. And we saw, despite everything: Love persisted.