Tell me something about the desert. Something more. I can tell it haunts you. 

I remember the hissing of the creosote bushes. We would set up in these brick ruins and use two adjoining walls for shelter from the constant wind. Flecks of sand still floated above and around. However slowly, we were being buried.

[The rain is falling hard enough, the clouds so dense, you wouldn’t know the sun has been up for hours. Under the blankets, the heat of two bodies, one’s head on the other’s chest.]

I’d have Frank prep the body on the pockmarked counter while I kept my head down. I took to picking out the wind’s distinct sounds, counting them up on my fingers. When Frank was ready, he’d nudge my hand with the blunt part of the scalpel, cold metal. 

Smooth skin didn’t bother me as much, but something about thick hair across the chest made me squeamish. Scars and birthmarks too. I could imagine—I couldn’t always stop myself from imagining…It only took the slightest pressure for the scalpel to slice through that top layer of tissue and expose the bright white sternum underneath. Then Frank would trade out the scalpel for the saw, the saw for the separator. I had to forget myself again. Maybe I wish I’d been better at that.

[The listener strokes the teller’s long hair. Remembers what it’s like to unclog their shared shower drain. A dripping creature.]

The heart would already be putrid gray. The blood had been drained, but flecks of it still dotted my hands as I sliced through the veins and arteries. These first hearts were rarely needed. 

By the time I began, the job mostly involved unrequited cases. But even so, I found myself handing the hearts to Frank so gingerly. 

The replacement heart Frank passed me would be the same empty gray. As I aligned it in its new cavity, I would imagine how these two had known each other in life. Had the original owner of this heart passively observed their beloved from afar, or had they perhaps let their feelings be known, only to face rejection? Had the two shared a bed for years before a sudden betrayal cleaved them apart? I sewed vessels together as if blood might flow through them again. I sewed the chest closed. Then I was done.

And the body?

Frank stowed it away. We brought it with us back to town. After that, I’m not sure. You have to understand, I was so alone. And still, it was possible it might be my body upon that counter someday.

The home for the heart of a stranger.

Just to matter that much to someone, it seemed like enough.

Alix Perry is a trans writer from Cascadia. They are the author of the poetry chapbook Tomatoes Beverly (Querencia Press, 2025) and have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. Their work is published or forthcoming in Foglifter, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Shore, and elsewhere. More at alixperrywriting.com.