Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo

i miss your mole & i’m sad i can only see you in my dreams

“every poem

is a grandmother

a womb that has ended

& is still expanding”

—Yolanda Wisher

i remember you, abuela, & how you’d braid my hair each night i slept over. It keeps the hair healthy and strong, mija, you’d tell me. You’d make tortillas on the stovetop, touching them with bare hands to flip them. The blue flames of the stovetop licked the backs of those tortillas, brown specks sprouting all over their surface, the same color as your best dish, mole. You’d tell me that means they’re ready. After you showered at night, i’d see similar spots stippled all over your back and shoulders albeit darker, nearly black, the same shade as your hair. i think of how my own body holds those same spots but a lighter shade of brown. As i get older, those marks only seem to increase. i wonder if mine will ever overtake me like yours. i hope they do. Tortilla is made from maize. i don’t think they sell maize with different colored kernels in supermarkets here. Maize finds its origin in Mesoamerica, which is now Central America, and Mexico, which was once California. i was born in California, but was i? Still dreaming up landscapes that aren’t my own. How i can see myself in the land i grew up in & the land you are from.

Bio

Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo is a Los Angeles-based poet, writer, and feminist of Greek and Guatemalan descent who grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. They completed her Bachelor’s degree in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College in 2020 where they worked with Zinzi Clemmons. Her work has been featured in Twisted Moon Magazine, Evocations Review, Feast Magazine, Stellium Literary Magazine, Stonecoast Review, Rush Magazine, Stanchion Zine, Latin@ Literatures, and Tasteful Rude, and she is a recipient of the 2019 Argonaut Summer Research/Creative Writing Fellowship.