In April 2018, a pedestrian sees a young Black couple on the Lower East Side. The pedestrian begins thinking about the strength of stories, how they serve as testaments to a time gone by and how they perform the ritual of mourning. The protagonist feels hope, looking at the couple, but then remembers the energy in the air 28 years before, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. As the couple walks away, the pedestrian wonders whether movement has been made forward, whether the energy of that moment has carried forward, how, ultimately, the story between those two moments connects.