Hey there, today's episode is hosted by the poet and writer Victoria Chang.

Hang tight and I'll be back on April 8th. I'm Victoria Chang and this is the slowdown.

I'm Victoria Chang and this is the slowdown. slow down. When we were little, we would go apple picking in Michigan.

This was in an age where the red delicious apple seemed to be the only apple around.

One year, the apples in the fields were particularly delicious.

Their insides had a lighter, translucent color and the apples had a perfect sweetness.

My immigrant parents, always frugal, would bring several knives, a water

bottle sprayer and paper towels ready to wash and cut the apples in order to eat them while picking them. My favorite part was climbing

the ladders going up and down trying to find the most perfectly beautiful apple glistening in the sun or hiding in a shadow, just slightly out of reach.

I loved how all my energy, seemingly my entire purpose in life on those days was to find the best apples

one by one in order to make my father proud of me. Then after a long exhausting day, we would reward ourselves with donuts at the cider

mill. What I miss most is the warm donut brown and crispy from just coming out of the friar, the way the insides were soft and

steaming. The donuts came in brown paper bags and I ate them right out of the

bags that were a darker shade from all the grease. Then we top off the sweetness

with swigs of apple cider. When we got home, we'd have boxes and boxes of apples that we would store in the basement.

I still hear my mother's voice yelling at us to

eat the apples.

Today's poem is by beloved poet, Bridget Pegine Kelly.

This is a poem that seems so easy to describe,

yet it's so hard to pin down.

My favorite kind of poem, both clear and mysterious. It's dreamlike, mystical,

biblical, and so much more. It magically depicts what it's like to be a child on the cusp of something in the face of the

...