Here is a single line, and it holds a whole small story. The speaker looks back at someone named Maria and says they "cherished" her smile and kept it from fading away. We don't learn who Maria is: a lover, a friend, a family member. The poem leaves that open, and the title and the untitled opening marker "* * *" make it feel like a fragment of something larger, or a thought caught mid-memory.
What stands out is the speaker's tenderness. A smile is a fleeting thing, and the idea of keeping it from fading suggests that the speaker holds it in memory, perhaps because Maria is gone or far away, though the poem never says so. The past tense hints at that distance. The mood is quiet, warm, and a little wistful: affection mixed with the awareness that things slip away unless someone holds on to them. The speaker's love shows up as an act of care, a kind of guarding.