I don’t know where she got the twenty
unfolded slowly from the ones
and passed over the counter
to buy a beaded bracelet
“For my daughter,”
she said, and gave a gummy smile.
 
She said she had a picture
with the sun striking her child’s blond hair
standing among sunflowers somewhere
“like mine,” she said, and patted limp strands.
 
I recognized the way her hands
shimmered around her head,
recalling the long grown daughter
of the sunflower photograph.
 
I knew the way her hands moved—
they were like mine,
fossils etched with a once-held child.