ode to my belly button
BY LIZA SPARKS
You remind me that I am hungry. That I hunger. That I am meant to be fed. That this is a natural state of being. I should not be ashamed to want. You remind me that I need connection. You remind me that it is natural to be tethered—to other people, to a person, to an idea, to a thing. You remind me that I have grown from something small, small, small. You remind me that all of us were once small, small, small. You remind me that I have experienced loss before / a severing and survived.
Liza Sparks (she/her) has work published in The Pinch Journal (online), Allium, Timber, CALYX, Split This Rock, and many others. She was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net in 2022. Her work is informed by her intersecting identities as a brown-multiracial-neurodivergent-pansexual-woman.
Headshot: @nvthepix
south broadway press 