Do you ever get swept away with a romance novel? Maybe you are all not hopeless romantics like me. André Aciman wrote a novel in 2008 entitled Call Me By Your Name about two young American men falling in love in Italy one summer in the 1980s. Their days were “numbered” because of the discriminatory nature of society. I have read the follow-up novel Aciman wrote recently, Find Me, and that is why I ended the song the way I did…
Ever since high school, I have obsessed over romance stories (with a tragedy-bent). I watched the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and began a year or two of watching it at least once a week. I read the play, and I performed both roles when I was on the Forensics Drama and Debate team. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting gave a superb performance, the best I have ever seen.
In Aciman’s book, the prose carried me to a place of sweet joy as well as frustrated impotence…and the result is this song. Enjoy! Also…share with me any works of art that have touched you so viscerally that it caused you to create something…thank you! And thank you André…
Numbered
I wake up and know that it is all sinking
Our diamond-crusted reef… I am blinking
Fire tears through me as I feel when we first met!
I hold my breath as our sun sets
I can’t believe that I forgot to remember
That you and me, our days were numbered
I had eaten the crumbs on that path back
To myself, and I know I can’t find my way
My eyes, liquid love at our memories
As I realize the door is locked, and I have no keys
Back in the house of my soul I crawl
Your portrait is on the wall
There, I stare (2x)
Time will thicken my skinny membrane
Covering my thoughts and flesh of you, untamed
I run at top speed away to you
Only go the distance through me
Where are you?
You’re here, you’re near…
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