Call Me By Your Name

by André Aciman

Staring at his neck with its star and telltale amulet was like staring at something timeless, ancestral, immortal in me, in him, in both of us, begging to be rekindled and brought back from its millenary sleep.

What I may have wanted instead, from the moment he stepped out of the cab to our farewell in Rome, was what all humans ask of one another, what makes life livable.

If he knew, if he only knew that I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.