Even from here

Julia.
i can tell you're beautiful from 100 years away.
you're holding someone's gaze,

 and you don't see me.  

You're holding redwoods, rosewoods, chocolate with cinnamon and roses in your eyes,

two good beautiful eyes.

and I'm thinking of Cream.  Cream like peaches and Honduras roads

cream milked from deep blue starlights and nightskies and that is you, 

that is how you feel

in my memories of you
in stories.
Julia Eva

even from here, 

standing admiring this photograph of dear Grandmother you are beautiful.  

Your one good arm and your smile and you.  

Two good eyes to watch and to read life around you, 

to watch her grow, my grandma, to hold her close with that one arm

to sew birthday dresses with only five fingers, to tuck her into bed 

with two good eyes and only one good hand, and

to still smile roses and see rosewood and be peach and mahogany. 

Your two good eyes to close before your one lost arm was torn away,
your two good eyes to close on the torn streets of Honduras,
to blink away the iguana as big as your six-year-old self,
to cry away the Avocado trees and your two good eyes
never again to see brothers and sisters and father and your mother.  

Julia Eva. 
   even from here I can tell you are strong. Even from here, from this photograph, even here from scraping windshields free of ice and even from high school and so many years away, 

dear grandma, you are beautiful.  this photograph doesn't show your one arm and it doesn't show Honduras.  It doesn't show machetes or nights as refugees and it doesn't show stories my grandmother has told me, stories of a girl my age and younger who lost her arm in exchange for life, who survived rivers and hot summers and iguanas, coups and revolutionaries, 

but now
I'm trying to remember.