I found myself in Boston once again, wandering streets I walked decades, or even centuries ago. This city has been a touchstone for me, a place I return to when an old life must give way to the new. I can measure my years on this continent by the changes wrought upon this city. It was never a conscious thing, not plan or design, merely happenstance transformed into habit. Habits are dangerous for me. I have maintained a dwelling in this city for more than thirty years so perhaps it is for the best this now comes to an end.

The apartment is empty now- I cannot imagine why I felt the need to come here yet again. It is not as if I am banished from this place, Boston being no great distance from Harrisburg in this modern age, yet for some reason this parting feels so… final. So I roamed, covering old ground, seeing through the veneer of this modern city to revisit those places so familiar. The houses I knew, the ghosts of people I could have loved, or perhaps should have loved, but did not. Revisiting scenes of moral failure, opportunities lost to fear or mere fate, things undone that cannot ever be done, standing on the Common, the chill breeze working persistent fingers into my flesh as memory erased today revealing visions of the past.

I lingered such that I missed my flight, but South Station was there before me, the 2171 train scheduled as if pleading for my company. As we rolled from the station I could feel the ghosts of the city clinging to me, unwilling to see me gone for they needed my remembering, but I can serve them no longer. I may yet return here, but I know my absence shall measure by the score.

Posted on March 2nd, 2006 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Present