Kirsten Reneau
Bellybuttons

I was born early, not yet ready for the world. Too small. Too sick. My father cut the umbilical cord, held the scissors with the same hands he folded in prayer over my body.

Now my finger searches for the first injury I sustained, tries to fill it in and make me whole again. It is a birthright: a half-inch hole where the original connective vein was cut and pulled from, the foundational injury that never healed, never folded back together, left a canyon in my belly.

A reminder: of the original separation; of the loneliness; of how something is still missing.