I was sent away with labels: little cotton strips,
my name, sewn in red, attached to all I took with me.
Or if they couldn't be secured, my mother,
sending me, at age seven, to boarding school,
took out her indelible pencil and wrote my name
in that distinctive blue-black on hatbands and shoes.
I caught the train at Crewe, wearing my grey jumper,
blue cardigan, joining the other little girls also
in their uniforms. Yesterday, I found a label on a hat
in my mother's hand, lightened by the years.
I am marked, too; can never wash it off.
E. Laura Golberg’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net 2021 Prizes. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, and RHINO, among other places. She won first place in the D.C. Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.