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# Relative
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/relative/
- Published: 2026-05-23T09:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:08:21.000Z
- Description: “Relative,” 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.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Dry Humor, Generational, Homage, Long form musings, Poems, Apple Watch, Buy One, Buy One Get One, chyrons, CNN, Design, Grandma, Holiday Weekend, KIA, Killed in Action, Kitchen, Mattresses, May, Memorial Day, Paralysis, Reno, Saturday, Sketchbook, Spring, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

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.