EPISODE 2 – CALL IT HUNGER
- Enzo
- Dec 25, 2025
- 5 min read
SONG
LYRICS
I knelt beside him
By the cat
Bare-footed grace before me
Firm in stand
I whispered softly
"Does she have a name?"
He only laughed
I felt his warming hand
It felt right upon my shoulder
Me safe below
Something burns bolder
He said
"You tame the wild, it seems
She fears the world, but not your dreams."
What do you know about my dreams?
Call it hunger
Call it faith
Something wild beneath my face
It's a storm I can't outrun
And I'm undone
Undone
Oh I fall, I fall, I fall
He said
"Down there
Someone's hungry, see!"
He meant the cat, but it was me
I rose though every bone said "stay"
My body begged
My mind obeyed
Strong and true he took my hand
"I'm Giorgio
Who are you my friend?"
"My name is Enzo"
Soft, afraid
Through his touch I was remade yeah
Yeah
Call it hunger
Call it faith
Something wild beneath my face
It's a storm I can't outrun
And I'm undone
Undone
Oh I fall I fall I fall
At his feet
I found my place
Bare and bound in earth's embrace
No control
Just time, the will
And the wish
To stay by him
Him him him
STORY
I knelt before him, before the cat who pressed her closed eyes against my fingers as if she had decided to trust me. Her warmth calmed me, yet I knew she was not the reason for my trembling.
In front of me, only a hand’s breadth away, stood his feet in the dust: broad, steady, self-assured. I stared at them as though something were written there that only I could read.
“Does she have a name?” I asked quietly. I wanted to say something, anything, so I wouldn’t seem utterly mute.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he smiled as if I had asked a question I should already know the answer to. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder. Heavy, warm, calm — as though touching me was the most natural thing in the world.
The cat purred. I did not. I held my breath.
It wasn’t a grip, not a demand. Just a hand. And yet I felt something inside me give way, as if a decision had been made — neither spoken nor consciously chosen.
Me below. Him above.
Not as humiliation, but as a truth I suddenly recognized.
“You’re good with wild beasts,” he said softly, almost playfully. “She’s usually very shy around people. Fears the world, but not what you wish for.”
I swallowed. His words hit deeper than he could have known.
I could have said many things, let countless thoughts slip out, yet none of them would have survived my voice. Men like me had to be careful. Very careful.
“I think someone down there is hungry,” he said with a smirk.
Of course he meant the cat. But my skin tingled as if the words were meant for me.
“Yes, call it hunger,” I replied at last. “Maybe it’s just belief… that she’ll get something if she begs long enough.”
His smile grew a little warmer — or I imagined it. I could barely tell what was real and what arose inside me.
I had seen men, desired men, touched men. But this man was different.
In him I recognized no simple longing but something that felt like certainty — a knowledge I wasn’t allowed to have, yet that still grew inside me:
He is the one.
Not because I knew him.
But because something within me filled him, in a single breath, with everything I had ever yearned for. It was irrational, dangerous. Yet I couldn’t fight it.
My mind knew it; my body believed it.
The cat rubbed against me again. The more I tried to focus on her, the dust, the heat, the stronger he pulled me in.
I was caught in a storm that needed no wind because it raged inside me.
I could have knelt forever. But eventually, some remaining sense of decency or upbringing forced me to move. I slowly rose, though every fiber of my body whispered, Stay.
For the first time, we were at eye level. Or rather: I stood, he simply was. His smile was closer now, even more beautiful, even more dangerous to what I tried to hide. His gaze was clear, without demand, without judgment — and still I felt exposed.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
My voice felt as if it had to push through water. “My name is Enzo.”
He reached out his hand to me. It was large, rough, marked by work, and yet the movement carried an unconscious tenderness.
“Giorgio. Nice to meet you.”
The name hit me with a force that must have looked ridiculous. But that’s how it was. In the moment I took his hand, something inside me loosened. Everything that made me who I was — the boy from the village, the returnee from New York, the grandson, the laborer — faded into the background.
Not because it became unimportant, but because he suddenly stood at the center.
Something within me took over, something older than reason, older than fear.
That something said:
You will serve him.
You will carry him when he is tired.
You will be his shadow when the sun burns.
You will be the ground he can stand on.
He knew nothing of this. To him I was just a young man who had spoken his name. But inside me, a space opened that had always been waiting to be filled.
Money, plans, work, the olive groves, New York — all of it faded.
Not because it was meaningless, but because it now lay behind a veil.
What remained clear, what glowed within me, was him.
I wanted to be needed.
I wanted to know his desires before he spoke them.
I didn’t want to stand beside him.
I wanted to be at his feet, without shame, without disguise.
While I still held his hand, I felt my body already aligning itself with him.
My thoughts let go of my future and circled around his presence.
He didn’t need to do anything, didn’t need to say anything. His mere existence was enough.
I knew I was creating an image of him larger than any human could bear. He was a stranger — yet it felt as though I had always known him. As though he were the answer to questions I had never dared to ask aloud.
The storm within me did not settle. It was hunger and belief at once. Without him, I was no longer whole.
I had found my place: down there, in the dust, at his feet, beside the cat, shielded by the earth and by his nearness.
He was the strength.
I was the movement.
When I finally let my fingers slip from his hand, I knew — without being able to explain why:
Time would pass. Days would come.
Yet everything that mattered to me would revolve around him.
I knew only his name.
But I already belonged to him — and he didn’t even know it.
