I do not watch to be aroused, I watch to be undone. There’s something in the quietude of their love stories, in the way two hands brush on accident, once, only once, and the camera lingers, as if the world itself had caught its breath. I watch our Asian and African dramas because they have not yet abandoned the language of longing. Their stories speak in glances that stretch into forever, in silences that vibrate louder than any moan in the dark. There’s a holiness in restraint, a kind of trembling divinity in the way they do not kiss. And somehow, in the aching absence of skin against skin, I feel more seen, more split open than in all the sweat-slick love scenes Western cinema can offer. So yes, more often than not, I find myself unable to fall for those whose culture demands immediacy, whose love stories start with teeth and fingers. Not because there is no beauty in that, but because for me, love has always been waiting. Waiting and watching, a thousand still moments swelling with potential. You see, I don’t want to be touched, I want to almost be touched. That’s where I live, in the almost, in the maybe, in the heartbeat between hands.
