My dead boyfriend’s sweater

It’s hot here. My thoughts come out in a damp and and woozy sweat. My reliable and adorable neighbor is steadily loading truckloads after truckloads of “clean fill”. My dad sent me annual prompts to clear my shit out of the basement. He called me the “pig pen of papers.” Sometimes, I did some and then left home for elsewhere, miles and miles from home, my Dad said. I had the idea that he was wistful. And silly. I knew him and why he did what he did. Adorable.

I don’t know how long it took, but it seemed like forever, and it seemed forever in a way that he was patient and slightly amused. How I always saw him in my mind, how lazy and self-serving my 62-year-old self says, how ridiculous and entitled I seem. But was I then? Are my littles lazy and self-serving?