“They are the stains of the past” she told me as she cupped my face close.

The stains of her past could have been cleansed, I could have washed them with her in our old age-but she went away and died too young, I was too young, I miss telling stories about her face.

I am a mum, I trace the shape of my daughter’s face with my wrinkled fingers and I get to tell her wondrous stories about the moles on her chin, she has brown dots on her eyes, they aren’t blemishes though.

They are stars past down by a woman who mistook them for stains.