His cities

San Francisco will forever be his city. I won't be able to visit Dolores Park without thinking of him, canvas bag slung over his shoulders and hanging low below his waist, overlooking his city. Maybe he's thinking about his childhood home. Maybe he's thinking about me. Maybe he's thinking of which coffeeshop to visit for his afternoon espresso. Who knows? He just looks peaceful.

He already knows that I will leave two short months later for an internship in Beijing, but he's trying not to think about that. He is lost in the moment, in the city he loves, to celebrate his newly-acquired "doctor, but not the kind that helps people" status with his new(ish) fiancee. He doesn't yet know that Beijing will be the beginning of the end.

In a way, Boston is his city, too. He grew up here. His went to school here. Twice. He met and lost his love here. Twice. The second times, both times, were much more difficult than the firsts.

But Boston will never be San Francisco. Boston is where things are broken, where the world beats him, where he remembers the corners he retreated to because he had nowhere else to hide. San Francisco is where things heal, where the world embraces him, where he can hide from the pains in Boston without hiding from the world.

There are many other cities along the way, too. Some, he will always associate with me; others, he might only have the kinds of memories that fade easily because they struggled to imprint heavily on our minds in the first place. A gourmet burger place in downtown Hollywood might cause him to pause a second longer than usual, triggering a vague pang that he finds hard to pinpoint, but that which suddenly brings my image into his conscious thoughts. Or perhaps a dolphin's glide in the waters of a coastal city conjures up the sounds of uncontrollable laughter from a different time (and perhaps even a different city) as he pulls out his aviators to cover up the glint of the water. Similarly, a pickpocket in a foreign country might remind him of a story told on grassy fields amidst a group of giggling frisbee girls whom he tried hard to capture on camera.

Three years of cities. Three years of memories. Three years of promises of faraway places we will have to visit during the rest of our lives.

Three years became just three years, and three is not forever.

But San Francisco, San Francisco will forever be his city. To him, and more importantly, to me.