We were in Paris. Maybe even crossed on the sidewalk, by a restaurant he couldn’t afford and she’d refuse to be seen at. The street photographers seemed to follow her. The white cowl and overgrown Peter Pan collar were intriguing, alluring, in contrast to the stay-away message broadcast by the hound’s tooth suit with its knee-length skirt. She and the cameras might well have been in a snow globe bubble, unaware of and unshaken by the larger world. He was a traveling student and minstrel, of little interest to anyone for long, even when he chose the wrong street, stepping into a colorful riot of bricks and tear gas, flaming bottles and the bullet of a gendarme who mistook his shoulder-slung guitar for a rifle but didn’t take his life. And I? I was a passerby, an involved witness to their lives, oddly in love with her while she loved both of us. I don’t believe we ever met the shooter. The three of us lost track not long after. This is the way this poem ends, as this is the way most worlds end: With neither a bang nor a whimper.