> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://dianaludwick.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Cherry - URL: https://dianaludwick.com/cherry/ - Published: 2026-07-20T03:13:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-20T03:13:00.000Z - Description: “Cherry,” an observational poem on the takings-on of a fully homemade cherry pie from dough to wobbling cherry glaze, during the course of the last day of the World Cup 2026, written Monday, July 20, 2026. Poem number 201 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Cherry Cher - Author: Diana Ludwick - Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Current Events, Generational, Long form musings, Of Place, Poems, Arthritis, Breville, Championship, Cherry, Cherry Pie, D.O.A., Demerara Sugar, DO NOT FAIL ME!, Egg Wash, Endurance, Final Match, Final Score, Fine Motor Skills, French tart pan, Gluten-free, Good Enough, Husband, July, Lattice, Lattice Crust, Patience, Reduced, Six-Seven!, Skepticism, Sourdough, Sourdough Crust, Stewing, Summer, THANK GOD!, Uni-tasker, World Cup, World Cup 2026, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03 Pie, Humble? I don't buy it. The windowsill-cooled output of a flour-dusted wife or grandma? Those pies rely on real, significant investment. Pie is a Privileged Person pastime. Countless fragile, shifting elements of time, precision, patience, practice and multi-tasking, not to mention scores of utensils, appliances and timers. And curse words. My own pie begins with feeding my sourdough starter, an orchestrated dance of scales and bins of triple milled, non-gluten grains and accurately warmed — but not hot — filtered water, so that the chlorine from the tap doesn't pull an Agent Orange on my gentle yeast colonies. Already, nine different objects dirtied, consulted to keep them alive. Next, I pour excess bubbly starter into a bowl. I weigh out silken tapioca and fine brown rice and xanthan and salt. I begin to chunk away at bricks of frozen butter I rain down cow hail onto the floury field in the metal bowl. I press and squish and elongate chilly pats into insulated streaks of floured shingles. And since I doubled the recipe, I stretch and squeeze and press and toss, again and again and again until my hands ache and I imagine myself at eighty-eight riddled with arthritis and the knobby, whitish-blue hands of my great grandmother —another baker of pies — and wonder if I will look back on this moment as my hand affliction's origin story. My spasming digits press scraggly dry lumps of purply teff-streaked flours and daffodil explosions of butter into four flat rounds and ensconce each in wax paper for a chilly nap in the fridge. My next journey is power-spraying four-and-a-half pounds of dark sweet cherries from Washington state, because tart cherries weren't in stock. I put my faith in the location of pointy objects as I plunge my hand into the inner depths of a utensil drawer, seeking, through touch alone, the near-uni-tasker, my cherry —"And *olive*!" — (As I once defended to an absent Alton Brown, and to my present husband) —pitter. The World Cup 2026 Final match commences as I drop the first slick pit into my catching bowl. Spain faces Argentina; I face a riot of stone fruits. I load, puncture, thwack, dump, reload again and again and again until the game's at the thirty-four-minute mark. The kitchen is a crime scene, burgundy blood spray marks the salt cellar, the backsplash, the rim of the bowl, my hands damp and purpley. I zest lemon, I squeeze lemon, I pour tinctures of vanilla and almond I toss with sugar, some corn starch, then leave it. The mixture needs time, more time, to rest, for the cherries to release their juices like a secret for the liquid memory of summer to accumulate. At minute sixty-seven (Six-SEVEN!) of the Championship game, I put my focus into draining off the red elixir into a waiting saucier. "Three to four minutes over low heat," the recipe lies. At minute ninety-five, the juices have reduced to something like a loose gel. Now it is time to prepare the crusts. I press my strength into the rolling pin with the same hint of force I'd give a massage to a restless baby who wasn't mine and I was live on nanny cam. I roll out the dough pucks into oblong attempts at a circle in the neighborhood of ten to thirteen inches long at any circumference point. "Good enough," I grumble, as the clock hits 102 minutes. I prepare a traditional deep dish, which I know will be more rustic, too messy for my intended gift, and then a chic fluted French tart pan for my second shell. By the time I am doming time-soaked cherries into crusts, at minute 106, Spain has scored, the first goal of the game. I level my eyes to the rim of each baking vessel. I decant into each an adjudicated portion of ruby glaze. And now the hard part: lattice. With gluten-free crust. Most would call this a fool's errand; I would not disagree. I remove the last two fat-striped rounds from the fridge and I put my remaining energy into stretching, rolling, slicing strips. As for the weave itself, I should have consulted a manual. Instead, I free-stripped it, laying a long, saggy straight of dough across the top of my deep dish, watching in predictable dread as the dough bottom dropped into the wet mass of filling. I then free-formed the plait making the endeavor ninety times more difficult than necessary, patching as I went with dough that rapidly dried and returned to its separate flour and butter components under my frantic touch. Like trying to score a goal in the World Cup. Standing back, I assess the damage: this pie will stay at home, in the dark, my private shame. No amount of creamy egg wash and demerara sugar glitter will be sufficient lipstick for this pig. I push the failed dessert into the depths of my oven, slam the door in ire, set a timer for twenty minutes. I growl: "***See you in HELL***." \[In my periphery, my husband shifts on the couch, invisible ice cubes on his back.\] The pressure's on, now, no more screw-ups allowed. I lean into sanity, and make my second lattice on the pastry mat then slide it onto my tart pan as if easing fried egg from hot skillet. **"No effing way!"** I hoot victorious, my revised approach prevailed. I double fist pump the air, threatening to pull a shoulder. *I am old, right.* I remind myself. I return to the much-reviewed, never absorbed recipe page. "At twenty minutes.. "...turn the oven down to 350--" "**FUCK!!!!"** I scream, my rage vivid, palpable. My husband jumps, visibly, in his seat. "What,.... Babe?" He ventures. I register his hesitation; he fears his safety. "I messed up!" I wail. "The pies are sequential, "but the oven requires two temperatures. "The second pie is **FUCKED**!" I see him, through the back of his head, calculating whether to bring perspective to this situation, whether to remind me that foul language makes him uncomfortable. He wisely opts out. "Can you just... "...pre-heat the toaster oven? "Bake off the second one there?" His voice dies off. Reasonable solutions? And in a moment of no options. How *annoying*. "FINE!" I bark, with thin gratitude. After many hours on my feet trying one new procedure after another, I let myself sit down on the cream couch, holding my stained hands away from the cushions. "Did you set a second timer?" He asks, already knowing the answer. **"FUCK!"** The deep dish emerged burnished and burnt. D.O.A, fated to be consumed in the dark in the hovel of my home, never to have proof of life emerge in the public eye. All bets are on the tart, now. "DO NOT FAIL ME!" I threaten the sky, thrusting my crippled finger at the countertop Breville. After a period of stewing in silence while pretending to watch the post-game commentary and then some new Apple TV show called *Lucky*, the last timer pings. On under-oxygenated legs, I walk to recover my last chance at victory. "THANK GOD!" I cry. She is perfect. She is photo-worthy. She is dinner party-approved. Final score? **Tart 1: Pie 0.**