You know that feeling when you're digging through the attic at 2am just to find some old tax papers because the bank is breathing down your neck, and you find a box you forgot even existed? You're sitting on the cold floor with a flashlight, your knees clicking every time you shift, and suddenly you’re looking at a ghost. I found this stack of polaroids from the summer of '84. The year the asphalt on the street literally melted. And there I am. I’m wearing that heavy black velvet trench coat. It was thick. It was heavy. It was so heavy it felt like wearing a lead blanket in a furnace. Sometimes you just want to disappear into the dark even when the sun is trying to burn you alive. I remember the smell of that coat. It smelled like mothballs and clove cigarettes and salt. So much salt. It’s 102 degrees out, the radio is warning people to stay inside, and I’m walking to the bus stop in velvet. Every single step, every step, felt like I was wading through hot soup. My skin was stinging, just stinging, but I wouldn't take it off. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me breathe or seeing me break. Looking at those pictures now, with my retirement fund looking like a bad joke and the house falling apart around me, I feel this knot in my chest. You look at your younger self and you want to scream. I spent so much time trying to be something else, trying to be hard and cold and different, while my old man was working double shifts at the mill just to keep the lights on. He'd come home grey with ash, just grey, and see me sitting there in my velvet costume like I was the one who was suffering. I didn't say thank you. Not once. I just looked through him like he was the one who didn't understand the world. It's funny how you carry that weight with you for forty years. The weight of that coat... I feel it now, but it's not velvet anymore. It's the bills on the kitchen table. It's the way my son looks at me now when I tell him we can't afford the things his friends have. He gives me that same look. That same cold, distant look I gave my father. It’s like a cycle that won't stop, won't ever stop. I was so busy being "dark" that I missed the actual light while it was right there in front of me. I was so selfish. Just selfish. I put the photos back in the box but the smell stays in your nose. That dusty, hot velvet smell that sticks to the back of your throat. You think you're going to grow up and be someone important, someone who doesn't have to worry about the price of milk or the leak in the roof that gets worse every time it rains. But then you wake up and you're sixty and you're still just sweating in the heat, wondering where the time went. I should have taken the coat off. I should have helped him when he was tired. Now I'm just sitting here in the dark, wondering if I'm ever going to feel cool again—or if the heat is just part of who I am now. Every single day, every day, it just gets hotter.