{"id":1738,"date":"2026-05-23T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2026-05-24T15:18:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T15:18:52","slug":"relative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1738","title":{"rendered":"Relative"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The world is on fire
and I am wondering, 
matcha or dark roast?
I pick Americano over ice 
with lots of milk.

Why not?
I sip it through a straw 
to mitigate against staining 
my aging, thinning enamel.

I thought I'd be at the pool
breaking in my new bikini
but the rain sheets the house 
like a carwash and outdoors,
the thermometer betrays me, 
blinking: \"54 deg F.\"
So cruel.

I rustle loose from long-term storage
an enormous artist's sketch pad
that I've had since 1995
and I have left untouched, 
as an archive to my youth.
That is until now; why not?

I get back in bed, 'cuz, why not?
It is the kick-off of summer
but the storm lingers overhead,
as if in a mighty dishwasher.
I'm under weighted covers, morose.

It is a \"holiday\" weekend
where we \"score\" skincare 
at a fetching buy one, get one rate.
Mattresses now twenty-percent-off.
We wish each other:
\"Have a great weekend!\" 

But we are meant 
to be remembering 
our dead relatives.
The ones 
who never 
got to give us 
cousins.

The one whose absence
haunted my grandma
until her own death bed
sixty years later.

Remembrance 
and revelry, 
mourning and making do, 
it's all relative.

I lose myself in the hours
my right palm's edge 
slippery with graphite
as I drag my hand back 
and forth over the large sheet.

I fill the pages with kitchen designs
cabinets here, no scratch that.
Erasers curls dot my sheets 
like an infestation of weevils.

I had removed my Apple Watch
because I tired of it judging me:
my non-movement, 
my negative burn, my paralysis.

My eyes glaze on a distant clock.
I realize it's after five.
As in. 
Five o'clock.
In the evening.

I force myself to push back
the fifteen pound seatbelt 
of my quilted, weighted blanket
dredge legs through warm linen
to find the chilly bedroom air.

I bring my messy sketches
my tear-out sheets
my edited design renderings
and I waddle downstairs, still PJ-clad.

Dozens of metallic percussive waves.
Shots fired, right at the White House
CNN breaking news, 
I read chyrons on the TV.

\"I am not a conspiracy theorist\"
I hear myself say.

= = =

[Ballrooms.]
[Ball pits]
[IKEA]
[Pits of despair]

= = =

Now nestled into the couch
the nightly news blaring on in the foreground
I am mid-asking myself, aloud:
\"Should I bump it to a 36\" freezer? 
\"So many gluten-free bread loaves to store.
\"Is a 30\" panel too limiting?\"
Because, why not?

My husband, the productive one,
is the only one in this house 
not rendered into limp noodles 
with low barometric pressure.

But I am not the only one
dissociating.

He's deep into the mise en place
for an elaborate beef,
ginger and squash stew
the selector of CNN as atmosphere,
as background vibes.

Meanwhile, our kid walks in and out, 
reads the scrawling headline
hears the shots and asks, 
\"Can I have ice cream before dinner?\"

And I say:
\"Why not?\"

Because honestly. 
If we can survive this day,
then preemptive dessert is fine.
It's all relative.


<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cRelative,\u201d a duo of absurdities. Written Saturday, May 23, poem 143 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Hallucinated Kitchen,” drawn and photographed by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,262,311,290,4,2],"tags":[808,1217,1218,1210,704,1212,93,1158,1209,1208,55,1216,865,1159,1215,1211,705,1213,361],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-dry-humor","category-generational","category-homage","category-long-form-musings","category-poems","tag-apple-watch","tag-buy-one","tag-buy-one-get-one","tag-chyrons","tag-cnn","tag-design","tag-grandma","tag-holiday-weekend","tag-kia","tag-killed-in-action","tag-kitchen","tag-mattresses","tag-may","tag-memorial-day","tag-paralysis","tag-reno","tag-saturday","tag-sketchbook","tag-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}