{"id":1806,"date":"2026-05-27T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2026-06-02T10:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:57:09","slug":"triangles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=1806","title":{"rendered":"Triangles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tiny triangles on stitched Lycra strings 
tremble in the breeze 
of a nearby rack 
whooshing with moving hangers.

I lean in closer to confirm if these 
are meant for human girls \u2014
or for their American Girl Dolls.


The teeny bits of fabric dance on the rod
in lime green seersucker
in gold lam\u00e9
on seashell-adorned straps
that meet swirls of cerulean, Kelly green 
and optic white \u00e0 la Pucci
(Not that this set would get that reference).

The racks burst with feigned abundance, 
 \u2018til I lean in to decipher the tags:
XXS
XXS
XS
XXS
XS
XS
XS
XXS

I sift through the available stock 
with increasing urgency:
XXS
XS
XXS
S
S
S
S
XXS
XL.

The sparse sizing 
feels like a code
I can\u2019t crack to a joke that
I\u2019m increasingly suspecting is on me.

None of these suits will suit her.
Maybe thirteen year-olds can go topless?
Ugh.

I turn to the coordinates section,
Boldly proclaiming their identity as: 
\u201cBottoms!\u201d
With the exclamation and all.

Here I find high V bikinis that threaten 
to turn into a thong upon pulling up, up, up
over bike versus asphalt accident-scarred kneecaps.
Nope<\/em>, I think.

I turn my attention to a spaghetti mess 
of tangled string loin cloths.
Before I can edit myself I exclaim:
\u201cYour Dad would die a million deaths<\/em> 
if he saw you in this. We can\u2019t cause a heart attack.\u201d

Luckily for all three of us, 
these also come in the inhospitable Xs 
on either end of the wide bell curve 
of women\u2019s straight sizes.

No need to argue;
even she knows 
there\u2019s none in front of us 
that would not fall off or fight to go on.

It\u2019s her waning moments of being twelve
And this came so soon.
I can still feel her roundhouse kicking my spleen.

And now I\u2019m here 
casting a long shadow
in fluorescent hellscapes
of a man's making
helping her find infinitesimal isosceles 
to adorn her not so baby body.

And something inside me trembles
like the bits of cloth
on a string
on a rod
in the mall
and I find myself carrying 
the bits of social signalling
to the cashier
and charging the lot on my watch
and putting the miniscule items 
in the massive bag
that I've just been upsold on 
for a dollar.

This is twelve
on the cusp of thirteen
and I'm not sure what's next
in the geometry of life
but I do know it involves 
smaller clothing 
and pricier hang tags.

<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTriangles,\u201d written May 27, poem 147 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “strings and young things,” by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,552,311,200,887,2,551],"tags":[1171,1278,1272,1176,9,40,1277,1276,1274,1273,865,10,361,1275],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-faux-lament","category-generational","category-humor","category-loosely-hinged","category-poems","category-unserious","tag-bikinis","tag-code","tag-daughters","tag-fluorescent-lights","tag-humor","tag-kids","tag-kneecaps","tag-lycra","tag-male-gaze","tag-mall","tag-may","tag-parenting","tag-spring","tag-xxs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","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=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}