The narrator reflects on their tumultuous birth experience where both they and their mother were in critical condition. Their mother, despite the chaos, insisted on the name 'Roxanne,' while the narrator contemplates their identity and connection to their absent father, Luther Kennedy. The narrative weaves together themes of survival, family dynamics, and a lingering sense of not belonging, as the narrator struggles with their name and existence.

1. Roxanne Kennedy.
My mother and I almost died when she gave birth to me. My mother had always told
me that she would wait for the moment I was born to name me from the 1948 list of most
popular names. Aunt Francis told me that my father was sitting in a chair asleep holding that
piece of paper as if it were his way of showing everyone in the room he might have a
purpose to be there.
"We can't name a dead baby!"
My mother was rushed into intensive care where she was put under while they took off
my noose rope cord off my fragile neck. Even before I entered the world I was contemplating
leaving from my own submission. They nurse woke my mother who I heard was so out of it,
she looked like she would always be that way.
"Oh shit!" my mother tried to get out of the bed before being grabbed by the nurses.
She took her cup of ice chips and flung them at my father who didn't flinch.
"Luther! We have to name the baby get up!" my mother screamed with her hollow
voice that bounced off the walls and made my Aunt Francis feel and hear like she was
feeling double.
A small ding so faint that only a blood hound and my father could hear it. Apparently,
that wasn't the only thing he had in common with the canine family.
He handed my mom the list and lit up a cigarette and sat down relieved.
My mother looked at the list as if she were seeing it through salt water.
"Roxanne!" my mom said showing the nurse as she pointed to the boys list on Joseph.
"Ma'am that name isn't Roxanne, You mean Ruthanne?" the nurse said pointing to the
name Susanne.
"No Roxanne." she belted out as she took the birth certificate and focused hard to
make out the letters legible enough and signed with a check mark and XO. Then she smiled
and hummed to herself as she rolled her eyes in the back of her head, applied melting red

2. lipstick on her lips which went onto her face as well and kissed the certificate. She closed her
eyes and licked her lips as if they were covered with powdered sugar and made a sour face
with her eyes shut tight. The nurse signed for my father Luther who had left half way through
his cigarette to go. The nurse nervously signed his name spelled, "Mr. Luter Kennedy."
For extra verification of the events the day I almost died my aunt gave me a copy she
had made of patient notes made by the nurse in the room. Before I even decided to ask how
my aunt retrieved them she told me that that the nurse was bent over with her hands folded
and her head down pretending to pray, and when the first stream of snores broke she lifted
them from her smock pocket. Sadly, documents and personal accounts from my family and
the hospital staff proved the story was pretty accurate. Sometimes when I have a positive day
dream telling myself things about my life are not so strange I pretend the events in my
mother’s hospital room probably happen to a lot of people. Instinctively I knew that wasn't
true and whatever I knew about the events that occurred 18 hours in that hospital room was a
cleaned up outline what really took place. I should have tied my rope of placenta tighter. I
should have gotten out while I still had the chance. Not because of who I was going to be
soon be around, but because I felt like my life was somehow so much better before I was
born. I think God mistook me for the wrong angel who was sent down here for not wanting
to teach spirits in a bible study class or something. I am not sopposed to be here, but I am
afraid to let see myself out. The question would be who was going to walk me home, and my
soul was always open to potential candidates.
Still even now, I don't feel like my name is really mine. I thought the name Joseph
was more applicable than, "Roxanne.”. It took a long time for me to answer to, "Roxanne,"
but after that I discovered how to build her into something beneficial.
As for my biological father whom my mother still won’t acknowledge his existence to
execute some plan to remotely mirror the Kennedys' by his exit.

3. Luther Kennedy or, “Mr. Luter,” was a part of the real Kennedy family but his relation
was so far on the outskirts it barely made the last rung on the end of the Kennedy ladder. I
never met the president Kennedy or Luther. When I was born he didn't even look at me. My
aunt told me that was not out of guilt it was just that the curtains were pulled back and there
was a sun glare in his way. He put a bullet in his head the day after he left the hospital.
My only proof that he might have existed was the black smeared symbols made by
mother and her cheap red faded kisses and red smeared birth certificate I stole from my
mother is safely locked in fathers silver Cuban cigar box they found open on his night stand.
On the cover engraved in clock letters were, "Good Luck Roxanne."