Linda Laderman

Today Would Have Been Our 50th Anniversary

A mixed marriage.
Clergy shuns us. The judge shushes us.
I sentence you to life.
Guests laugh. I don’t.

My period comes after the cake.
Giving you a bite, I contemplate peeling
off my pearl studded dress, not white, but ivory,
and getting on a Greyhound.

Instead, I drive with you to Atlanta,
Underground.

Like waves,
rising, receding, repeating,
we sift stones from sand.

We have a child. A boy.
In a dream, I take him and flee in your fancy black car
with the white racing stripe.

Linda Laderman is a Detroit area writer and poet. She grew up in Toledo, Ohio and earned an undergraduate degree in journalism, and post graduate degrees in law and liberal studies. Her stories and features have appeared in media outlets and magazines. Her poetry has appeared in The Jewish Literary Journal, The Bangalore Review, One Art, Third Wednesday, and The Sad Girls Club Literary Blog, among others. Until recently, she volunteered as a docent at the Zekelman Holocaust Center, where she led adult discussion tours.