Heather Heise

We’re kissing, but only because I initiated it. And is—is he cringing? Beneath the hardening wax stamp of our lips, he confesses, “I don’t like kissing. It’s the only reason I hadn’t … sooner.” We’re frozen in eternal slow motion, and he also tells me he prefers double time. “Double speed?” I ask, without yielding any flesh. “Isn’t that unintelligible?” He reassures me that listening presto to others dissecting the lives of others dissecting the lives of others is an insurance policy against dementia in forty years. “Anything to forge new pathways in the neural network.” I focus on the kiss at hand, but wonder at what point did we slip from the two of us, exchanging cells, to others
read more

She and I are friends, but we meet to share all the things we dislike about ourselves. We sit at the edge of the field watching the tall grass sway back and forth. “A thing I dislike,” I say. “How I bend to the wind, like this grass.” She agrees, “Not knowing what I want and letting the breeze crush me, exposing the brown soil at the seam. Yes.” We watch the grasses yield to the wind. The ones closest to us are turning to straw, but on the other side of the deep blue scar between fields, the reeds stand triumphant and green and the willows moan low and gray. “A thing I dislike,” I say. “How people call
read more

At the end of their relationship, she packed a small blue suitcase, scolded her cat for biting the handle, and left Los Angeles for the convent. In the crook of her arm, she carried his brain in a jar. Ball jar. Rubber ring seal. The pickled eternal he always wanted to be. Together they took up residence in a small room on the second floor above the cheese cave. Every day smelled like a new age of cheese. She place the jar on the corner of the desk where it could sunbathe from three to four each afternoon. After the sun passed, she pressed her ear against the glass, curious if he was still thinking. She swore she heard him
read more

She fills her house with empty things. Old birdcages found at Saturday yard sales. A wrought-wire townhome for someday finches, an expansive manse for two former lovebirds (they could not quench their thirst, though separate glasses had been provided). And a souvenir from Vietnam, in whose crisscrossed bamboo shoots, she riddles herself to sleep. She fills her house with empty things. Vintage perfume bottles arranged on a tray on her dresser. Frosted bodies in pink and blue, curvaceous “squeeze me” atomizers whose misshapen forms hardened long ago (she denies any likeness to her heart). And straight away, she dabs herself with one of the cut and polished stoppers smugly gossiping about how to withstand aging. She fills her house with
read more