Modern.
The podcast is supported by.
Produced by.
The Ilab at WBUR Boston.
From the New York Times and WBUR Boston.
This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption.
I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti.
We don't always think about the privilege of human touch and of being able to hold another person's hand while we're walking down the street.
But Nicole Dennis Benn and her wife have thought a lot about that.
She writes about their experience in her essay who's allowed to hold hands?
It's read by Alicia Keys.
Alicia is a 15 time Grammy Award winning artist.
Her new single is called Show Me Love, which Alisha calls a meditation on the simple, powerful magic that comes from being lost in love.
On our first date, I dared to give her a lingering hug on a crowded subway platform on West Fourth street, an unusual display of physical affection on my part, which I blamed on the wine.
It was the start of spring, the city in bloom.
Charmed by the hug, she agreed to see me again.
We wandered the city, strolling through the Upper west side in Harlem.
Smiling her shyest smile, she told me she dreamed of living in Harlem and starting a family.
After finishing graduate school, I began to visit her at her studio in Washington Heights, where we would spend hours.
She would make us dinner, mostly pasta sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, the only thing she knew how to cook.