Karkínos
When I was studying my undergraduate degree, I used to write palindromes during my rides on public transportation. In modern Greek, a palindrome is not called “palíndromas,” but something far more beautiful: karkínos, the word for crab. The image is striking: a gesture that requires going back, moving in reverse, retracing the line of a word.
But then a paradox appears: most words, when read backwards, lose their meaning.
H O M E <***>/ E M O H
And it is precisely in that impossibility that the game becomes interesting. Palindromes do not follow fixed rules; instead, they rest on the improbable possibilities that language itself allows to emerge—in that brief instant when a word, against all odds, manages to say something as it folds back onto itself.
I write my palindromes in my mother tongue: Spanish.
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