I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I've lived in my house for almost 16 years, but before that I moved almost every year for 10 years,

apartment after apartment after apartment.

This meant packing up my things every year when the lease ended and also negotiating with my then partner what to keep, what to get rid of, and where to put everything in the new place.

The first decorative object I bought for my first apartment as a first-year MFA student 25 years ago was a glass head.

I found her in a shop and named her Fiona.

Fiona still lives in my house now, in the entryway, where she greets anyone who walks in the front door.

Sometimes, despite the many shifting variables, objects can be a constant.

My life today is very different from my life 25 years ago, but Fiona is still here.

Today's poem makes me think about these small negotiations and also about timing.

How the lives we're living might have been different if we'd made different choices

along the way. Who might I have been, or with whom, or where, if the timing had been different.

Did I arrive too late to certain parts of my life, or too early?

Or am I right on time?

The Choose Your Own Adventure aspect of life is something on my mind a lot.

I suspect it was on this poet's mind, too.

Wind-related ripple in the wheat field by Miko Harvey.

I love the shape of our apartment as I walk through it in near total darkness.

I love walking slowly through that darkness with my arms out,

trying not to bump into furniture. How many apartments have I done this in now? I loved them all,

or possibly I just loved how they held darkness, slivers of streetlight

sneaking into the fortress, amplified and lent personality by the darkness surrounding them,

...