I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

For nearly two decades, I stacked overflowing bankers' boxes in my basement and garage.

I rented a self-storage unit for almost as long near an airport to store packed plastic containers.

Then, during the pandemic, I took it as a project to change my hoarding tendencies.

Two graduate students and I went to work atop a ping pong table,

armed with trash bags, a handful of markers, and post-it notes.

We sifted through mountains of paper and sorted 25 years worth of teaching, writing, and living.

Our workstation expanded to a dining room table, then any large surface, including the floor.

We tipped out between towers of papers, old correspondences,

flyers for poetry readings, restaurant receipts, book manuscripts.

It was like watching a storm settle.

Repeatedly, I became distracted.

I'd muse overdrafts of old poems and think them better than published versions.

I gasped at a picture of college friends circled around the campfire.

People, I no longer have anything in common with.

Where are they now?

Assigned card from fifth grade elementary school students in Chicago,

elicited joy, and comfort in our future.

A note of rejection from a notoriously grumpy editor made me laugh out loud.

But then, I'd wince at the recall of our hurtful memory,

like a break up with a woman I loved, captured in a letter,

or the financial struggle of my early days,

...