Ben

It gets to be so that I don't know what to say to the tune of his name. I never could have seen myself loving someone with such a simple appellation; once there was an Ivo, and once there was an Erhan, and even an Andrei. I never could've supposed that the name that etched itself the deepest in the surface of my heart would be one so common. But there's love.
Love is a common thing--and not quite so extraordinary as people make it out to be--there are people everyday, loving one another, not knowing or knowing it just the same. It is only the presumpuous artist that takes that fragile egg of a thing and tosses it around with words and tries to define it, and places boundaries in the spaces through which we were once allowed to expand.
"Ben" never meant anything to me--I had not known one, but in passing acquaintanceship. It was a name colored gray in neutrality, a blank face to the world.
Now that I have loved Ben, his name pervades every corner of my existence--when reading a book in which a character is named Ben, my Ben assumes the character's role; Ben is the face for every Ben in the universe, and every whispering of his name is special, whether it is of my Ben or another's.
I think that now, I am grateful that my deepest love was for a Ben--because an Emmanuel or a Giacomo simply wouldn't have done--because now, when I am old, and my children ask--being too young to comprehend the utter foolishness of the question--"What is the meaning of love?"--I can tell them a way that is concise but still faithful to the soul's definition--
Love is such a simple word, so perfect, so small. It seems as if it was meant to be written next to Ben's name. Not on some volume, but in the deep, secret places of my mind--
Love means realizing that "Ben" does not belong to me; rather, I belong to it. His name and his memory are forever entwined. He runs through my blood now. He is in my veins.
Perhaps this may change. Perhaps I will meet another Ben, and he will shatter my Ben to pieces, the glass rendering my mind has made him.
I hope not to live to see that day.