Hi, it's Maggie Smith. I'm the new host of The Slowdown, and I'm so looking forward to sharing new episodes with you starting August 18th.

In the meantime, we're revisiting some favorites from the archive, like today's episode from Ada Limon.

I'm grateful to share her work with you today.

Music I'm grateful to share her work with you today. I'm Ada Limoan, and this is The Slowdown.

I am a bit of a romantic.

When I was at a sleepover at my friend Missy's house in fifth grade,

we watched Romancing the Stone,

and I was so eager to see the two leads fall in love that I was the only one really watching

the movie. My friend Missy said, oh, I see. Ada is a romantic. And it's true. Missy was right then and

she's right now. I love love. Once, before I was married, I made a toast to my husband. We were living in

Kentucky and he was probably working. I held up my glass of wine and stared at him somberly and said

something about how grateful I was for our life together, for our relationship. And at the end of the toast, we clinked glasses and he said, and he said, I was for our life together, for our relationship.

And at the end of the toast, we clinked glasses, and he arched one eyebrow and said, did we just get married?

So, yes, I can be a bit over the top in my love of love.

Even when I was single, I could romanticize strangers or chance encounters or brief

affairs into something they were not. My imagination would form attachments based on ideas or dreams.

And each time I'd come back to my body, into myself, and realize that every email or note or

sidelong glance was not always the beginning of a romance.

Yet, while it was happening, I think I was somehow different from everyone else.

It wasn't just my own romantic tendencies that fascinated me,

but it was also those tendencies of others to be driven not by love or desire for love,

but instead to be driven only by the body and its desires.

...