Navel Gazing

You are my first and most perfect
scar. As a child I wondered how deep
you went. Were you Mariana Trench
or river eddy? I would try to unfold you,
find the bottom of your wrinkles, unravel
your lint magic, but you remained
a wrapped gift, an endless tease.

When I was pregnant, you popped out
proud as a performer who practiced
for years to sing an aria onstage. It turns out
you were just a modest knob, crinkles
smoothed, and, dear cul-du-sac, you led
nowhere. Shallow pit. Fallow. Season passed.
But long ago we drifted, suspended

in the thick gel of the universe. Without care,
I sipped the surrounding syrup as if sampling
the atmosphere, the basin of my chest
coddled in density, my four limbs plus your one.
You were the tether to my floating balloon,
the bridge to a new physics. And in those days,
you led everywhere.

*

Kat Lehmann is a founding co-chief editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. She is a winner of the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize for her haiku collection no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song. Her mini-chapbook of sudo-ku (the multi-haiku form that she created) and is available as a free download from Ghost City Press. A former research biochemist, Kat lives in Connecticut with her family. https://katlehmann.weebly.com