Author name: Mathew Haden

The first time I held a handful of it, I almost dismissed it as birdseed. Tiny, round, the color of […]

The afternoon light is kind and golden, slanting through your freshly wiped windows. The bed is made, the floor is

The first time I took a handful of them to bed, I felt a little ridiculous. It was nearly midnight,

The bathroom is still fogged over when you step out—the mirror a ghostly blur, the tiles shining with tiny beads

You probably don’t remember the first time you folded yourself into this shape. Maybe it was on a classroom carpet,

The first time you notice it, you shrug. A faint green dusting on the edge of a slice, a tiny

The first real cold snap always announces itself in your hands. One morning, somewhere between the kettle’s whistle and the

The first time you notice it, it’s tiny—almost nothing. A half-second pause when you open your messages. A stutter as

The first time I realized light could bully my sleep, it was 2:13 a.m. The room was dark except for

The craving starts as a whisper. The dishes are done, the kitchen hums with the soft tick of the cooling

On the coldest nights of late winter, when the house goes quiet and the pipes groan in the walls, there

The first sound is soft: a shuffle across the kitchen tiles, the faint slap of foam against bare skin. You

The notebook on my desk is not particularly beautiful. The cover is bent, the corners are softened by time, and

The pan was a crime scene. A thick amber gloss of cooling grease clung to its surface like melted plastic,

The sky is the soft gray-blue of early dawn when you swing your legs over the side of the bed.

The morning she turned sixty-three, Agnes woke to the tiny, traitorous click in her right knee. It sounded like a

The first time I walked into a bathroom that actually smelled like nothing, I did a double-take. No sour-towel tang,

The first time you really hear silence, it’s unsettling. Not the soft quiet of a Sunday morning, but the kind

The glass looks innocent until sunrise hits it. That’s when you finally see it: a smoky haze across the inside

The first thing I noticed was the silence. No familiar whirring, no impatient beeping, no microwave door slamming shut. Just

The first thing you notice is the silence. On a day when air shimmers above asphalt and heat pushes against