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 with a ribbon 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 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.