> ## 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. # Mall - URL: https://dianaludwick.com/mall/ - Published: 2026-03-07T20:29:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T20:11:02.000Z - Description: “Mall,” a long-form free verse poem on the changing eras of the same shopping mall. Written March 7, poem 066 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo, "Self Embrace at the Mall," by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026. - Author: Diana Ludwick - Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, Consumerism, Cycles, Dating, Generations, Kids, March, Mother Daughter Dynamics, Natural Order, Parents, Patterns, Shopping Mall, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03 “Can you like, take me to the mall?” While she asks, her tone is: *You will.* “Sure.” He says, before I can say “No.” He’s nicer than me. I close my lids so I can roll my eyes in darkness. Ugh the mall? The palace of products? El centro de comerciales? The temple to consumerism? “You have to come," she continues "Because otherwise my friends aren’t allowed to join, their moms say so. But. You’re *not* allowed to be near me.” She clarifies. What a blessing to have a child who wants nothing to do with me other than my free ride and a semblance of parental supervision. Exactly how I want to spend my precious Saturday night. So I find myself this evening, in the food court surrounded by a cacophony of scraping metal chairs. Tots wriggle and screech teenagers laugh while staring at glowing phone screens. Nine competing restaurants all serving dumplings or brown-glazed chicken prep their offerings with clatters bangs and fryolator hisses in their respective shallow open-front food stalls. I slurp a Fanta frozen custard float, since Orange Julius long ago left. I watch my husband eat from a styrofoam clamshell filled with Bourbon chicken. I get deja vous, of me sitting in this same location — but on different chairs, different court configurations — while on Open Lunch hour in high school. I down a Shake Shack burger with two hands and big bites, unlike the CEO of McDonalds. Once over-full of greasy food and saturated in discordant noise, we push away from the cocktail-height table. We then circumnavigate the expansive floors of retail. Somehow all vendors seem like the same four stores on repeat: Athleisure Skincare Plastic tiny toys and Blinking electronics. I feel a sort of nostalgia mixed with numbness as I pass the many storefronts that I have seen morph uncountable times since I first traipsed those halls as a toddler. “That used to be a Burger King,” I sigh to my husband, while I point at white sheetrock that now terminates in a Family Lounge. In my head I continue the tour. There used to be a GAP here. The desolate empty anchor was once a Sears. That nook in the dark used to be a family-owned coffee shop. It sold magnets in silver tins on a rotating tower. I’d begged for a set at age three. I recall staring up at my parents’ hips and looking at the shiny zippers on my Mom's chic acid-washed tapered ankle jeans. I watched her tap her white Reebok'ed toe on the tile while she found new ways to say "No." Tugging on my Mom’s hand after both had resolutely declined, I sulked while I contemplated running my pudgy fingers through the loose coffee beans, glossy and dark, that lay in in burlap sacked barrels that were tantalizingly my same height. I snap back to the present as I smell the unmistakable aroma of baking pretzels. Auntie Anne’s has been a constant, here. Otherwise, seemingly every store is in the midst of swapping leased sites within this one building: Up to down, left to right, Big footprint to small, small footage to big. Dizzying; senseless. I can trace the economic booms and busts through my memory. I study the geological layers. Each storefront door holds holds the essence of an earlier time, a shuttered institution a prior iteration. “That was once a Woolworth’s” I mumble to him as I point to a candle shop. “That was a Hecht’s.” At present, it's a Macy's. "That was Imaginarium." In its place: Build-a-Bear. "Over there? Sharper Image." Now it's a Kiehl's. Now in 2026, somehow our daughter has found a way to stay here an hour and forty-five minutes and still want more time. When we finally reconnect at the negotiated, extended time, she forces out a huffed breath. “*All* we did was *watch* our one friend try on three pairs of jeans. Each pair, she tried on twice! We didn’t even get dinner. I’m starving.” Ah. Familiar. She has been initiated into the world of shopping with friends. Retailing in packs can be fun and dull and calming and stressful; a destination and a sentence. Forgetting her frustration she walks ahead of us towards the car, bouncing on the rubbery heels of her new pink suede Adidas. I observe her as she repositions her hoodie which she’d tied around her waist just-so. She’s so much cooler than I was at her age. Another flashback: I had my first double date here, back in the late nineteen hundreds, a few steps from this spot. My best friend and her real boyfriend held hands and nuzzled each others' necks. The second boy and I, we were each selected as cover for the dating pair, to satisfy my friend's parental rule of No Dating. Then, our quartet had entered a KayBee Toys store — today it's a sneaker shop — to buy two cans of neon Silly String. The girls had sprayed the guys and vice versa until mall security threatened to intervene. I remember my would-be date sprinting away from me in black and white Adidas. I’ve been coming to these hallowed, hollow grounds for forty years. Life repeats: every generation a kid asks their parents for more; strikes a bargain, or doesn't, and then walks back to the car. Inadvertent memories forged and forgotten until the next visit to the local mall.