Ava Hartwell

I sat down hard and the basement came up with me. Not a full smell. Just a note, cool and heavy, that rose from the cushions and settled across the living room. The throw blanket on the arm had started carrying it too. I had washed that blanket twice. It still smelled like the stairs.

The towel on the sill never really dried. Even in January, when the rest of the house felt dry enough that I cracked a knuckle just walking past the thermostat, the fabric under the window unit stayed cool and a little damp if I pressed it. We had wrapped the outside of the unit in

The pot boiled over on a Tuesday. Steam climbed the tile backsplash and hit the underside of the hood, then kept going. I stood there with the burner still on, watching the water run down the front of the stove. The hood above it stayed dark. Its switch was on the wall to the left

The bottom drawer stuck on a Tuesday. I pulled, and the sweater on top came out smelling faintly like a closed trunk. Not dirty. Not the soap we used. Just old, a little flat, the way fabric gets when it sits too long against something that never warms all the way. I had blamed the

I kept the humidifier because the bedroom had gone thin. Heat had been on for weeks. The sheets snapped when I pulled them back. A cotton blanket at the foot of the bed felt stiff instead of soft. The small white unit sat on the floor beside the nightstand, cord along the baseboard, tank refilled

I kept renting the machine because a brighter hallway felt like a decision. The wall-to-wall still photographed like a finished house. Light hit the nap. The paint along the baseboard looked new. I wanted the floor to take the place of the argument I could not win with a printout, the same hunger I wrote

The kitchen door hit the weatherstrip and dropped. Tile, then a thin metal edge, then concrete two inches lower. My arms were full. Grocery bags cutting into my fingers. A backpack sliding off one shoulder. I pushed the door with my hip and left it open because closing it would have meant putting something down.

The door stuck a little before it opened. Not enough to be a problem. Enough that I had to lean my shoulder in. The air that came out was cooler than the bedroom and older than the hall. Coats hung too close. A winter sleeve brushed my face. Soft wool that still held last season.