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

So often I find myself wanting to memorize a perfect moment so I can revisit it in my mind.

I want to bottle the memory so I can sip on it later.

Writing is a way of memorizing moments. I know this. I do this, because a poem can act as a

portal, taking me back to a specific time and place. So often, mid-experience, I start to sense the poetic possibility of the moment.

I find myself making a metaphor or grasping for imagery and descriptive language.

I'm half living in the present, half processing this moment's future on the page.

But sometimes I just want to sit and live the experience without trying to find language for it yet.

Sometimes I just want to take a Polaroid or a tiny video with my senses only,

cataloging the way the sun filters down through the leaves, or the constellations of freckles

on a loved one's arm, or the way the water sounded, lapping against the side of a boat.

In those moments, I don't reach for my pen and notebook. I don't open the notes app on my phone and

typeing. I just sit still, watching and listening. Sometimes I admit what I'm doing.

I'll say it out loud to the person I'm with. If it's someone I trust, not to give me side

eye, when I say, let's just sit here for a minute. I'm trying to memorize this moment, so I don't lose it.

It can be hard to remember a feeling exactly. I can't pull up pure happiness, but I can remember

times when I was truly happy or deeply feeling other emotions.

I can recall the images, the sounds, the smells associated with those moments.

A certain version of the sky, at a certain time of year and time of day, is stuck in my mind because of the experience it's associated with.

And I'm grateful for that, because I want to find ways to remember these feelings, for myself and for poems.

Today's poem is a logbook of memories, not yet perfectly organized into a tidy narrative.

It's as if the speaker wants to remember it all exactly as it happened inside of

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