Your bedroom-slippered feet glide by, inches from my head bowed to the floor, trailing mustard and sandalwood and roses, and I rise to see your lustrous face, laughing and victorious or dark with purpose, eyes grave and hooded—your eyes slit tight in some deep thought or blooming wide like a child seeing its first elephant. This is what we had of you at the first: a face so beautiful, so full of every kind of strength and compassion and confidence and softness. So like a giant you were in our midst, then tiny and surrendered as a child in our arms, a form so ever new in its expressions we couldn’t pull our eyes away.