I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

I'm a keeper, by which I mean I keep things.

I'm sentimental.

I squirrel away objects that are precious to me in drawers and boxes and file cabinets.

But sometimes I hide things so well, I lose them.

It's frustrating when I can't locate something and know I'm the only one to blame.

Maybe this has happened to you. The place you stash something is so safe. It's safe even from you.

I've misplaced or lost many things in my life, but a few come to mind because losing them pained me. A few Polaroid pictures of a loved

one who's gone now, some vintage clothes I was attached to, a long handwritten letter. At first, losing those irreplaceable items

felt like losing the keys to that loved one, that place, that time.

But I eventually realized the doors to those memories are still there, and to my surprise, they're

always unlocked.

I can open them with my mind, my imagination, whenever I want.

Do I wish I still had the things I treasured?

The keys to those doors?

Yes, of course I do.

But I don't need them.

Today's poem explores memory and loss

And how objects can help us resurrect the past.

I have lost it by Monica Farrell.

It's gone missing, that old note card with something crude written by a man once in a summer, I remember as terribly hot.

I read it, reclined outside in the park, paging through this huge volume he'd sent by special messenger to my address.

...