💋 Only You
The terminal was still loud. They had already gone somewhere quieter.
Inspired by the Song “Besame Mucho” by Andrea Bocelli
Behind the Story
In case a future never came.
A line that feels familiar but has uncommon phrasing. We don’t often reckon with the idea of losing tomorrow. It is a too-real possibility always in the background, not acknowledged unless juxtaposed with the uncertainty of death.
We carry the possibility of loss the way we carry our own heartbeat, steady, without looking at it directly.
Bésame Mucho was written in 1940 by Consuelo Velázquez. She was twenty-four, and the world was at war. I can only imagine what she was carrying when she wrote it, but I feel it in the song. That particular ache of someone who understands, maybe for the first time, that a goodbye might mean exactly what it says.
There's a moment in the song where the melody drops, and the plea underneath becomes impossible to ignore. Kiss me. As if tonight might be the last time. I've heard it a hundred times, and that drop still does something to my chest.
I don't think we're meant to live in fear. But I think the most honest love keeps that fear somewhere in the room. The way a candle reminds you of the dark. In those moments when that fear steps out of the background, not only do we embrace it, but we also stay present and love as we've never loved before.
On the Visual Process
How can I showcase this feeling of fear tomorrow while also embracing all the love that could possibly exist? That was the question. I pondered hard for a couple of weeks, working on this zine’s storyboard. How do I bring that background fear into life?
I came up with several ideas and situations, but the one that stood out was a simple yet relatable goodbye.
I drew on my own time in the military for this one, the specific texture of those goodbyes. The way people hold on to the past beyond the point where it makes practical sense.
The way the body tries to memorize something before the mind has agreed to let it go. I’ve stood in terminals like that one. I’ve watched others stand in them. There’s a particular stillness at the center of all that noise that I wanted the panels to hold.
The image I kept returning to was a camera slowly spinning, the terminal noise blurring into the background, two people coming into focus as if the rest of the world had agreed to step aside for a moment.
That was the visual logic for the whole zine. Every panel builds toward the same thing: narrowing the frame until only they exist.
The closing image, him kissing her again as she begins to blur into the terminal, was what the zine was always moving toward. The question, the tears, the foreheads touching. All of it is weight being gathered, so that the final panel can carry it.
I wanted the fear to be visible without being named. The blurring is the fear.
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A Question for You
Have you ever let yourself love without holding anything back, just for one moment beyond the fear?