Catawba, Virginia
nearest hospital: 20 miles
My mother clings
to the passenger side door
of my father’s baby blue pick-up–
to be traded for a minivan two years later–
watches the golden headlight
hit dirt and gravel.
My speeding father asks,
one last time, if my name
could be Samantha.
She whips towards him,
owl in angry flashlight:
“She is not coming out of me
With that name.”
In my mother’s first
year of teaching
Samantha kept lice
for the entire year.
She could not hear the name
Samantha without off-white
specs colonizing a seven-year-old’s
tiny dark head.
An ease off the gas,
Quick turn around the bend,
My father grabs my mother’s knee
As she holds to that car door,
They barrel towards a beginning
Without a Samantha.