June. July. Amsterdam. Rotterdam. Barcelona. Coffee shops, classroom windows, supermarket surveillance cameras. Hours of Deutsch, days disappearing into each other. No time to write. No particular desire to, either. Whatever.

Security cameras everywhere. At the Selbstbedienungskasse, on street corners, above the places where nothing seems to happen. People passing through reflections, pigeons occupying the pavement like they own the city. Looking at things twice. Sometimes three times.

Family arriving from Madrid, from Bogotá. Familiar faces in unfamiliar places. Summer happening somewhere between train rides, language exercises, coffee breaks, and the extra-ordinary things that somehow stay. Somewhere along the way, the camera kept working. The writing didn’t. Here we are.