My Dearest Lil’ Weenies,

When I saw you at the grocery store prior to my drive up north for a nice long weekend in a warm cabin, I knew it was meant to be. There you were, near-ish the bacon and just above the cheddarwursts in the refrigerated back wall section where they also inexplicably keep pickles. “Yooohoooooo!” you said, winking seductively at me and blowing a little kiss. “Yoohoo, over here! You know you want to pick me!” And you were right. I did want to.

Technically you’re called “Lit’l Smokies” or something stupid like that, but what’s in a name, anyway? A teensy finger nubbin meat log by any other name would smell as sweet. I could call you Tasty Gremlin Pork Pinchers, Nobbed Saucy Fenchurches, or Small-o Nummy Stick Bits and the signifier would never approach being able to adequately encompass the signified. And so, my lil’ weenies, I grabbed four hermetically sealed packets of you suckers and traipsed like a happy little klipspringer over to the dedicated Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce section of my local food conglomerate. “Two bottles, please!” I said to nobody because there was not a BBQ sauce attendant on duty, and grabbed two bottles. I kissed them both tenderly, greeting an old friend.

This weekend will be, as they say, “a culinary affair of near-hedonistic proportions.” A gooey massacre the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Whitehall 1888 awaits me.

But first, I must crock you in a pot.

The wait is inestimable. Unbearable. But I am unflagging in my pursuit, unwavering in my devotion to the idea of putting, at minimum, 8-10 lil’ weenies in my mouth simultaneously and just breathing in their aura. If one pops out and tumbles unceremoniously to the floor, I’ll just scoop that little fucker up and pop it back in. None of you can escape me. I’m like a lil’ weenie black hole, and this pot at my event horizon just about done crocked.

The wafting aromatics! The veritable bouquet of, I dunno, what goes in BBQ sauce…ketchup? Brown sugar? Paris might have gazed longingly on the sunkissed and succulent Helen of Troy, apocalyptic visions of a thousand burning ships and a city torn asunder raging in his eyes, but if Menelaus had only had the quick forethought to wiggle a BBQ-drenched lil’ weenie in his face, Paris undoubtedly would have been like “Oh sweet, k I’m good,” tossed it down his gob, and then fucked off out of Sparta.

I will leave the tender moments of consumption just between you and me, lil’ weenies. To write them would be to immediately forfeit their beauty to the purview of mere language. Some people enjoy you individually, on toothpicks. Some people are trash humans living garbage lives. Can you hold the sun in your hands? Can you capture the seas in a mason jar? Get out of here with your toothpick nonsense. I will eat my beautiful lil’ weenies with my hands, thank you, with such ferocity that I consistently run at least a 60% chance of accidentally chomping my own finger off. Worth it? You’re goddamn right it is. I am an adult, I do adult things like pay taxes and rarely wash my jeans to preserve the integrity of their structure. So I’ve earned the right to, if I so choose, line you up end to end on the kitchen counter and push you one by one into my mouth, yelling “choo choo! Here comes the lil’ weenie locomotive! CHOO CHOO!” It is my inalienable right.

Our sordid affair does not end when I get full. Late at night, when the cabin is deep in slumber, I will gingerly tiptoe out to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door like it’s the jewel-encrusted arc of the covenant, basking in its incandescent glow. I will remove the leftover weenies, place them on the linoleum floor, then tenderly lay down face first in them, inhaling BBQ sauce deeply, resolutely, letting all my little alveoli soak it up like squishy little lung sponges. If one errant weenie accidentally slides most of the way up my nose, so be it. Happy little accident.

There were so many ways I could have gussied you up. I could have wrapped you in some bacon and called you an hors d’oeuvres. I could have tucked you inside a crescent roll, baked you up real nice, and made like I was about to host a luncheon for the goddamn Queen of England. But what are these trifles in the face of true love? I want you unbridled, unadorned, like a wild stallion meat chunk amuse-bouche.

I will drown in you like the memories of a past lover, polished smooth by the sandpaper whir of time, lil’ weenies. And just like gravitating with a familiar passivity back toward the thousand subtle abuses of love wrought sour, I have already forgotten the inevitable bedtime toots of so many lil’ weenies before you.

Love stinks. As well it should.

Yours,

Katie Sisneros