Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

I was born with a ticking clock inside of me that chirped and rang out many years later and its gears lowered my mouth open for a French kiss and made my skirt light up like a lamp with a shade saying “Someone’s awake in here … come see who it is.”

I am supposed to be touched. I can’t wait to find the person who will come into the kitchen just to smell my neck and get behind me and hug me and breathe me in and make me turn around and make me kiss his face and put my hands in his hair even with my soapy dishwater drips. I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?

On a Sunday afternoon, I went outside in my slippers and picked my kumquats from two young, slight trees. I picked ten Meyer lemons and five oranges. I picked yellow Mexican marigolds that smelled so strong, and all I could hear was the air moving the plants, and what I could smell was the perfume of the marigolds on my hands mixed with the wild lemon and orange scents. It was quiet and peaceful and I spoke out loud to the mystery of people, to the traces of the lives that had lived here before me. I imagined them looking out at me from the kitchen windows as I pulled up my sweatshirt to use it as a basket for the fruit. I grinned and showed my bare abdomen to my house and dog, and filled my sweatshirt with oranges.

Good, let it fall away, and look, look, everything is always remaking itself and so are you. Everything is art and nature and so are you.

I wake up and I am tired but once my feet hit the ground and I know that it is still very early, I feel relief. The kettle waits for me. I open all the old windows. I am a young woman still. I have cropped my hair to my jaw. I am not taking any more nonsense.