{"id":1742,"date":"2026-05-25T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T10:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2026-06-02T00:21:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T00:21:01","slug":"compartmentalize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1742","title":{"rendered":"Compartmentalize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I spent my dark and stormy \u2018holiday\u2019 Monday
lurking at the corner of homage and honor, 
feasibility and make-believe.

On this day, I started by giving thanks. 
I acknowledge the weight, the boulder, 
of a faded promise of a great-uncle 
who I never got to meet \u2014 KIA.
And then I turn to my sketchpad, 
time to wring the ROI out of this cloudy day off work.

Designing a kitchen requires many things:
Patience
Vision
Talent
Maths
Engineering
Spatial Awareness
A sense of function, of place.
A sense of belonging, 
of interconnectivity, within a greater whole.

And I have but:
Desire
Anticipation
Longing
Aspiration.

And displaced grief
from generations of lost cousins, 
absent confidants, 
and a highly decorated ghost uncle.

I\u2019m trying to put my life into drawers
Sort out kitchen shears from baking mats
Anticipate how many linear feet of cavities
I need to cradle all my flatware.
I seek to accommodate my neuroses.
Perfection will mask the matters I am unable to process,
despite having a 14-cup Cuisinart with three blade attachments.

Which nook will carry the burden of my KitchenAid Pro? 
Where will I hide the enormous counter-top toaster-oven?
How will I walk between the range, the island and the bin?
When will my endless list of Instagram-able 
\u201cmust have\u201d kitchen elements 
deplete my rudimentary architectural designing skills?

No matter how many times I render options,
I cannot figure out the corner. 
In every permutation I can conjure,
the space under the window, where the light comes in,
is destined to be a dead corner. 

I write \"DEAD\" diagonally across the space. 
It is lost.
I am lost.
I begin to sob.

I compartmentalize my feelings.
I stuff them into the drawers that
I draw on large-scale studio sketch paper
I erase the pain and in its place, a pull-out spice rack.
Perfect.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cCompartmentalize\u201d written Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, an homage to my KIA Korean War hero great uncle, and a descent into the labyrinth of kitchen design. Poem 145 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo, “Dead” – an acknowledgement of the hollows in our houses and our hearts, by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,262,290,2],"tags":[1248,1080,1254,1259,1212,1255,1250,1256,177,1252,35,125,220,1209,55,1251,1247,1261,865,1260,1159,1154,1257,11,1249,1253,361,1258],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-dry-humor","category-homage","category-poems","tag-architecture","tag-burden","tag-cavities","tag-cuisinart","tag-design","tag-drawers","tag-erase","tag-function","tag-generations","tag-great-uncle","tag-grief","tag-holiday","tag-homage","tag-kia","tag-kitchen","tag-kitchenaid","tag-korean-war","tag-lost-cousins","tag-may","tag-memorial","tag-memorial-day","tag-monday","tag-of-place","tag-relationships","tag-sketch","tag-spice","tag-spring","tag-vision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","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=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}