Hello, I am a woman on a blue-and-green sphere that has dollops and doinks of mountains all over it. Some of the mountains on my cosmic sphere splooge out thick liquid fire spurts that run downhill and cool and turn into vacation destinations after a few thousand years. I am a woman living on a planet that has noodle-shaped guys squiggling silently in the soil and four-legged mammal kings with hammer feet, or horns on their heads, or coats covered in spots and stripes. My planet also has live, feathered, beaky skeletons flying through the environment, and big, heavy creatures that are tusked and trunked and have sad, long memories and wash their bodies in cold mud puddles and know who their babies are. There are large, deadly cats watching everything in the dark, sneaking through the fanned-out ferns. There are delighted pigs and gossiping geese and dogs that sprawl with their mouths open so that they can cool off after running around.
There are arrows of extra electricity ripping through the air, and loud drum noises in the sky when two temperatures collide. Deep, wide dents filled with water are populated by animals with scales or blowholes or no eyes, and ones that live in shells that look like tiny purses made out of little plates. There are white puffs floating in the air here; they hover high above my house. The puffs turn into wet water bloops and fall down and turn my hair from straight to curly. The water bloops also make the flowers open up; they turn dust into mudslides; they can intercept sunbeams and make them into arches that you can’t touch because they are only swoops of colored light.
from "Going to the Restaurant" By Jenny Slate
The New Yorker, September 23, 2019
