From Strangers to Strangers Again: Sonnets of Remembrance

It's Oliver's last day staying with the Perlmans, and both men are already grieving the loss of each other. Each is trying to find a way to remember the other by. Both come up with love letters. This is a very short short story about Oliver and Elio's goodbye.

This is a sonnet sequence that I had to write for an English literature class at uni. Since (Shakespearean) Sonnets are traditionally love poems, I wanted to push myself to write a few under the topic. I've got no first hand experience with love, so I thought, 'why not write the poems from book characters' experiences?' André Aciman writes these boys with such care and precision. I thank him for creating such beautiful subjects; all I had to do was continue their story.

The first sonnet is written in the Shakespearean (English) style and is from Oliver's point of view. The second, Petrarchan (Italian), is from Elio's perspective. You'll notice that I've correlated their poem style to where they're from (Oliver, New England and Elio, Italy).

Psa: these are pretty shitty sonnets, I'm just publishing them because this is where I publish all my uni writing I guess...