Today’s poem is Agoraphobia by Natasha Sajé. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-seven. It’s not because I’m a New Yorker—I finished High School in Maryland, and it’s not because I had a principled opposition to fossil fuels, though I wish I could say it was. It’s because I was in a car accident when I was seventeen. I didn’t learn to drive not because I was afraid of driving, but because I was afraid of what could go wrong if I drove. It took me another ten years to face my fears. Finally, like the subjects of today’s poem, I realized I was living a smaller life because I was afraid.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp