owen (in the summer of 2009)

Owen, Owen, I thought his name over and over again as I sat in my room waiting to hear him pulling in to the driveway, ascending the stairs, opening the front door without knocking like he always did. He had been here one hundred times before, but today was different, today was tense and weighted. Today I felt pathetic and dull, sitting on my mattress on the floor, suddenly embarrassed at the record player, guitar and empty walls that I had in common with all of our cynical-twenty-something friends.

Owen was different, with four bedroom walls completely covered in photographs and taped up letters, articles and comics; there was no blank wall space in Owen's room. Owen had a round face full of light and sweat.

Owen, a person in my heart and in my dreams, a name I spoke in my sleep -- something I never would have known if it weren't for too much whiskey two nights ago and an attempt to capture the music from my record player on to my tape recorder. I faded in to sleep and the next morning, headache and pajamas, I heard my own voice murmuring beneath the fuzzy music -- Owen, Owen, whispered sweet like how you would say the name of someone who just had their heart broken, or your heart had just been broken by. Owen, Owen, over and over.

This was how I knew I was in love with him

This, I knew, was an unrequited love, a love that would never be.

My bedroom door swung open as if by a breeze, and Owen stood in the doorway. Owen had big eyes that shined of something like youth, he wasn't spoiled by time or politics, he was the only carefree person I knew. Tall skinny body, the carefulness of all his words; Owen was alive, so everyone else was probably dead.

"Jacob," he spoke, easy and gracious because he could always read me.

Owen borrowed books from me and lent me some of his. He sat at the foot of my mattress playing with the corners of the sheets, describing plot summaries and telling me what I should read first (enthusiasm can feel so novelty). Saying: "Sometimes I just want to read really sad books, where the characters are more miserable and flawed than I am." Saying: "Everything ever written is about love. If everything ever written doesn't break your heart, then there is something wrong with you."

Owen, Owen, Owen, I kept saying it, out loud this time, after he had left -- hoping the repetition would do something, like burn his name inside of me so that no matter how much things changed I would always remember him this perfectly. Through all his girlfriends and lovers, and mine, too, through old age even if we stopped being friends. Through new love, through tangible love, forever, Owen.