Metz smelled like wet bread and old grief.
The girl with Linda Ronstadt’s eyes took my camera — not my soul, just the lens that lied.
Germany refused the dollar. God? Maybe hiding in a bar where Irish coffee burns at 3am.
The briefcase came later — vase, helix, Hermes coiled in DNA.
Not France.
The trip was a postcard. Then a letter. Then silence.
You don’t return. You return *with*.
A folder. No money. No lens.
A face that remembers how to forget.
—
*(The camera doesn’t lie. It just stops working when the truth walks in.)*