> ## 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. # Crumbs - URL: https://dianaludwick.com/crumbs/ - Published: 2026-09-20T05:44:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T20:04:40.000Z - Description: “Crumbs,” a melt-down captured, when a certain someone's homemade bagels were accidentally baked too hot, too long, and burnt to a crisp, written Sunday, September 20, 2026 poem 263 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Twisted fibers," a macro image of a Kazak hand-knot - Author: Diana Ludwick - Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Culinary, Geriatric Millennial, Humor, Insufferable, Long form musings, Loosely Hinged, Maryland, Of Cooking, Of Place, Poems, Rants, Recipes for Life, Afghan, August, Baking, Crumbs, Curls, Dining Table, Epic, Fine, Floor, Greek Tragedy, I'm The Drama, Kazak, Late Summer, Magma, Melodrama, Melt-downs, Mid-Atlantic, Santoku, September, Slasher, Sunday, This is Funny NOW, Tragedy, Victim, Voice, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03 As if cracking open the front door on a sweltering inland mid-Atlantic August day — or un-lidding a boiling pot of pasta water — each craggy breath I draw punctuates in streams of unwelcome warmth that coat my face, swarm my eyes with thick, moist air. My field of vision is as short as my blown fuse; my view encompasses all there is to see within a centimeter of my snot-soggied nose. My inhibited sight comes from dry retinas: osmosis does its thing as my orbits attempt to equilibrate with the surrounding environs Which in this case, is my face against Afghan Kazak rug. In proximity to wool, my eyes dessicate while the rest of me steams. "Babe, they're fine, really," He calls out from the kitchen. I hear the blade of a long chef's knife — maybe the Santoku? — brush against rough surfaces He is scraping off once seeds, now ash, from the epidermis of each of my forgotten bagels and with each screech of metal against bread-turned-carbon I feel my soul sink deeper into wool strands which separate my face from wood floor. His confident footsteps creak through the kitchen towards the galley opening to dining room. He pauses, standing over the dining table, searching for me. He spies my curls splayed on the rug, one natural fiber strewn atop another, my skull downward, my body lodged under the dining table, my limp limbs threaded through chair legs as I lie in a prison, in a shame cave of my own making. The room silences then he draws a sudden breath. "Babe....are you.... "hiding--- "...lying on the floor??" He asks to the room, halting at the end, tinged with the apprehension heard in those who ask the wrong thing and then hear it in their own voice too late, a slasher victim who shuts the car door and then looks in the rear view mirror to see the glint of an intruder's knife. "I FAILED!!!!!!!!!!!" I scream, rationally. "THEY ARE RUINED!" "THIRTEEN HOURS IN THE KITCHEN "AND FOR WHAT???????" "DON'T TOUCH ME! "DON'T TALK TO ME! "I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS!" "They look...fine..." He asserts, unwisely. With my remaining strength and dredged dignity I lift my face from my woven pillow wipe the lanolin-saturated crumbs from dinners past off from my cheeks. "I AM DEVASTATED!" I articulate. "I AM HEART BROKEN!" "I HAVE NEVER FELT SO LOW!" \[I can hear his thoughts: "But you once endured a multi-year divorce...\] \[\[This time he edits his words, which stay in his cranium, if not off my radar\]\] "Babe, come'mon. "Give me your hand. "Get up." He commands. My eyebrows knit together in tight formation, mirroring the hand-knotted patterns now deeply imprinted on my forehead. "RUINED!" I reprise, while sending up a limp arm from under table lip for him to grasp. "Let's go taste one," He cheers, attempting to keep momentum. I rub more floor-food fragments from my knee caps from my thighs from my forearms from my nose. With little mirth, I follow him tracing his steps to the stovetop. I am reunited with the burnished bagels that will haunt my dreams for the foreseeable future, though now their surfaces matte, dulled from broken seeds debrided from their Pompeiian exteriors by blunt force of a chef's blade. I feel salty waves well in my eyes I might lose it again. He senses my shoulders quiver and offsets me with his unwavering belief that all will be "fine." "Let's try one," He declares. Stating, not asking. He pries an umber ring off the rimmed bake sheet. He selects a serrated bread knife off magnet strip above the counter. I watch him saw through burnt bagel my eyes loose, unfocused. I hold my breath. I observe as dark particles sprinkle down, loudly, crackling against maple cutting board. After a long while, the teeth bite through charred flesh and expose a bouncy, bubbled inner. My eyes sharpen, I take a tentative sniff. "It smells like bagel," I say, my face numb, my words simple. He rips off a length from the top round pops it in his mouth, full commitment. "It's *good*!" He confirms. And I don't sense a lie. Perhaps my bake *is* salvageable. He feeds me a smaller piece, holding it at my lips, waiting patiently for me to accept his offering. I chew through charcoal crust and my teeth meet creamy, fully cooked interior. As the indents from rug debris slowly fade from my skin, I chew on the bagel and on my melodrama. I do like a man who can bring order to the chaos I cast. May he linger longer than my tantrums and may he always find something to savor past my incerated crust and jagged crumbs.