In a city where people have to take pills because the sun doesn't come out enough.

I am grateful for my job.

I am grateful for a job that gives me my own office.

I am grateful for a job with my own office with a window.

I am grateful for a job with my own office and office window that lets me see the blue sky and sunlight. There aren't lots of sunny January Seattle days.

It's been a long time since I felt this light. It's a lightness that carried me through all my time at Centenary, and even at home, before I knew what home feels like because it's gone. Just a sunlit, easiness, happiness that hovered like a reverse rain cloud. A sun cloud. A sun.

The first time I was able to articulate it was on the front porch of James, I remember vividly on sitting on the smooth cement porch amid the columns and rocking chairs. And I was writing. I was reading for class outside it was perfect sunny and I was writing notes and I stopped paying attention and I wrote "I am grateful for a heart that feels like it's made of glass and sunlight. You give me a heart made of glass and filled with sunshine," and I meant it. And even though I'm not there anymore and even though you aren't around, I always think about that moment, that centenary sunny day with nothing to worry about but taking fake notes that turn into spontaneous love poems. A bright day inevitable sandwiched by nights of ridiculous dance parties, filled with their own type of sunlight: black glitter shining and fierce love for fun.

I thanked you for my sunlit heart, and even though you showed it to me, I should have realized that I created it, because it still lives in me. I could only have come from then and there. And I didn't know it until today, just now, right here, 2,500 miles away, where the same sun comes out and looks down, even today. And I don't know if I believe in god and heaven but because I feel this I know there are sacred places, and that we enter and leave them without knowing it, and they travel with us even after we leave. And if we are lucky, they reveal themselves when we need them, reminding us that we can visit them whenever we like.