has never changed with age the welcoming curve of her winsome lips two front teeth first glimpsed in Santiago’s Institute at the check-out desk as she stamped due dates filled patron requests happy in her work searching file & record always ready to serve but ID card required can recognize it anywhere even from years before in profile on stairs in her desert north standing with left foot tiptoed as her face with its ingenuous look turns from barren space toward his camera lens a scarf over hair tied beneath her chin homemade skirt & sweater captured at sixteen in copper country by Saul an admirer from then grateful to that rival for his earlier lust inscribed on this picture his “she at dusk” “ella en el atardecer” after we wed giving birth & writing kin desperately missed while living in places completely foreign on a teacher’s pathetic pay then returned together to visit Arica’s Pacific surf with behind her banana leaves & waves wearing her yellow sweatshirt & red-corn kernels necklace so beautiful it hurt her hairline straight between dark strands combed apart pulled back by ribbon or rubber band starts again thoughts of how her mature dignified style she insists on now has replaced that idyll refuses to play her younger self to dress as if a teenager then gaze at this of a second grandchild held in her arms here too her smile remaining just as warm tender open if anything sweeter even with gray untinted hair no wrinkling taking its radiance away