The Chalamet Complex | Petrichorgazette

The Chalamet Complex,

The first time seeing you

was like the first time seeing the

Call Me By Your Name trailer

sitting in the front row of the

sixteen-seat theatre under the library

where Timothée took my breath for the first time

& I thought who the hell is that

I was nineteen going on twenty

& it was a whole fresh wave of beauty

ground-breaking space for idolatry

new figure for the fantasy

curiosity calling me back that January

to Italy & eighties & nostalgia for things I’ve never had

seeing you was like that

it was like asking again & again

how in heaven can anyone be so

god-shamingly beautiful

you put the sun & moon to bed

with your celestial fingertips

with your eyes telling silent stories

you were unreal from the start

intangible as Chalamet

just a handful of stars

in my vision’s endless sky

just an angel making music out of miracles

see I never expected to find you grounded

to meet you on the plane of social exchange

I never expected to actually be friends with you

& god knows I acknowledged the blessing but

all of a sudden it was so much harder to revere you

so much harder to see you as a dream

& I stumbled over words that seemed unsatisfactory

struggling to string them all together right

speechless & starstruck & overly sentimental

looking for metaphors when you weren’t fiction

when you weren’t literature

when you weren’t imagery

which I couldn’t see through my Hollywood eyes

my perception of everything as pure story

see the thing that’s so good about Timothée

is that there’s no way to love him but in detached ecstasy

in dramatised glorification

in a vision that’s a perfect untruth

& the thing that’s so bad about you

is that that wasn’t the way to love you too.