I crave sun. I drink up sun like a dusty-faced vagrant stumbling over a pitcher of fresh-squeezed naranjas de florida. I brake for sun like she's a pride of endangered goldcats romping over the world's last acre of catnip. I could write it in fifty different ways and still I couldn't express to my own satisfaction just what it feels like to, once again, feel the light stretch out in the sky. To see a sun so bright I have to squint. To squint. Recordar el Sol. To remember the sun. To feel the warmth heat up my forehead, my face, to feel my body respond.

Winter seeks to always convince me that he is the constant, interrupted only briefly by periods of warmth. He does this with flowery and well-informed speeches and intricately adorned addenda. The sun speaks sparely. She easily dispels these loquacious lies.

I remember in the hospital, the last hospital, they wanted to scold me for stopping in my walk, the walk we were allowed to make back and forth over the fluorescently-lit tiles of the wing in a long, lulling oval path. I would stop at the end of the hall, facing the window there. It was the one place on the entire wing where sunlight would shine into the building and you could feel it upon your body. But only for fifteen minutes or so. Then, it would move up and over the buildings of the city and leave you in a somewhat greenly-lit and fully climate-controlled structure where there were always extra boxes of individually-sized cereal boxes but no windows you could open to breathe through.

You could stand in that sun—before They rushed you along again—close your eyes and pretend you were somewhere far away, somewhere standing on dry, warm land. Somewhere you were well-lit, pure, simple, and strong. The sun, she does that for me. You can keep the discussions about dopamine being released, or endorphins being triggered by sunlight, you can read to me books where pictures show children in Russia huddled in a dark classroom around a lamp with blindfolds on, but I don't need Science to understand that the Sun is the one true God. (Aton hears and gives a nod.)

I can feel the truth of this throughout the entirety of my being. In a very real, personal, and inarguable fashion. With a sun that returns and brightly burns, I can feel this truth in my heart, on my face, on my shoulders, in my hands. Bringing my skin and soul alive like a still-crouching flower, gently reminding me of what persists.