Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

There are so many times when I want to be here just for your consumption, just to satisfy your appetite. This is what I feel I am intended for—I can’t help it. An intention was inside of me already when I traveled from infinity to a kitchen with a windowsill, to a wish, to a woman.

My need is a helium-filled balloon that wants to be untethered.

My vulnerability is natural and permissible and beautiful to me, and it should remind you of your responsibility to behave like a friend to me and the world.

Information about art and nature feels like the best stuff to have, and if you have it, it is powerful and excellent to pass it on. That is an act of power, showing what you know, giving it to another person, realizing that as you spread it, you get to keep it but watch it grow, and by watching others have it, you learn new things about the original thing.

daydreams are many things but most substantially they are flares of faith and for me they are wishes that happen through feelings rather than saying “I wish so and so would be here and love me.”

The structure of what I wish for and the images that usually come together for me to be happy have to change now.

Without a person to love, I am too full of what must be let out, and while at least I can use my mind enough to bring out this image of this sea, it feels like life is the beach in the winter.

I am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad or is soft because too many hands have squeezed it but then put it back down not because I am not ready but because they were not ready for my type of fruity flesh.

I let it get so far that soon the thoughts were not just within me but were the main citizens of my world and they were mobilizing and marching to get me.

I am tired of buying my own flowers. I am tired of having to hold my breath through Valentine’s Day the way you do when you drive past a graveyard.

He has seen you drag your hand over your eyes to wipe away drops of sorrow, he has seen you place the hand on your heart, or press it against the hand of the ones that you loved.