By Chelsea Rathburn

—San Francisco to Miami, 1951 

My father recalls nothing of the flight itself, only
arriving, dazed, to meet the mother 

he hadn’t seen since he was still in diapers.
He doesn’t know how they left the foster home, 

or if his father was there to say goodbye,
or who paid for the tickets, only that they 

flew alone, he and his sister, arguing
over just whose Ami they were headed for. 

On the tarmac twelve hours later, he heard
two strangers yelling: his mother and new father, 

shouting a name they’d coined for him. They seemed
surprised, even angry, he didn’t know 

to answer to it. His memory stops there,
in that moment. Their anger never ended. 

His sister swears now there was an engine fire
that she spotted, then an emergency landing. 

More likely she remembers the stop in Dallas
to refuel, but my father’s given up correcting her.

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Chelsea Rathburn is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Still Life with Mother and Knife (LSU Press, 2019). The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, she lives in Macon, Georgia, and teaches at Mercer University. Since 2019, she has served as the Poet Laureate of Georgia.