Chikae Taniguchi/Japan

The Bellybutton

Since having had that cord cut

I had to start being myself

Driven by the first breath

Breathing hard with all my might

I finally found my voice, and began to speak

I can’t expose my bellybutton to the public

The original scar, the poor and funny opening from the birth

Different from the hands

Not like the eyes, the mouth or the breasts

The lonesome and often forgotten bellybutton

Is unsocial and can’t mix well others

Ah, poor thing

To have to walk through life alone

Keeping its spirits up, pulling itself together

Making up its own mind

Always being unconscious

Where it had been originally connected and supported

I occasionally hear a faraway voice

Coming from the vague memory of the umbilical cord

That had been mercilessly snipped off

The bellybutton, that’s black-mark in the middle of the stomach

Is the sign of a human-being

It is the symbol of the cross we bear (＊)

(＊ when we, Japanese, draw the bellybutton, we put a cross in the middle of

the stomach instead of the small circle)