{"id":2086,"date":"2026-07-07T12:37:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2026-07-07T17:20:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:20:52","slug":"milled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2086","title":{"rendered":"Milled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In the past month, 
through a series 
of small burrs 
that grew into bruises
and of small acts that 
spurred obligatory responses,
I permitted my 
boundaries to blur
my endurance to waver
and my defenses to falter.
Pressed flat, crushed
beneath the mighty rollers
ground down under 
the millstone of life,
I let external noise and chaos
bleed into the peripheries
of my shaggy bran and
pierce my exposed kernel.
I went from whole grain 
to unenriched dust
in the span of six weeks.
And I allowed it
through my politeness
and wish for peace
and hope for calm.
While I have been 
rendered unrecognizable
through the machinery
of the times,
left in a heap, discarded,
I still have value, 
a second act in hand.
Onward, forward, airborne:
I will fly free as silken flour
cloaking with newly found 
surface area
flourishing in baked goods
making sauces velveteen
smoothing out the landing 
for those around me
undergoing their own duels 
with the rolling pins of existence.



<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMilled\u201d an observation of force and mass on objects and living beings, written Tuesday, July 7, poem 188 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Dark Side of the Dough,” by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[1797,1795,118,1790,1792,1793,1799,1788,1313,1418,1329,1558,1789,1791,1784,1786,47,1798,1785,1787,1794,134,1796],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-poems","tag-airborne","tag-baked-goods","tag-boundaries","tag-bran","tag-bruises","tag-burrs","tag-calm","tag-commitments","tag-discarded","tag-existence","tag-freedom","tag-july","tag-kernel","tag-millstone","tag-of-writing","tag-on-making-space","tag-peace","tag-politeness","tag-relationships-with-self","tag-rituals","tag-small-acts","tag-summer","tag-velveteen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","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=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2093,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions\/2093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}