Dear Sun

Spring is finally here, and with it, sunshine. Sunshine is beautiful and oh so desirable, especially when you are stuck inside in a 3-hour pediatrics class. So I wrote a letter to the sun. This is what I wrote:

 "Dear Sun,
I miss you.


I want you to know that my absence is not completely voluntary.
It's just that you spend your moments dispersing shadows,
and I spend mine maintaining them.


Seizure precautions and sleepy patients need the dark. I light up their lives
by darkening their rooms.
And it's nearly impossible to use a laptop wearing sunglasses. So I write case studies
under half-hearted fluorescent bulbs. And all the while I think, what a horrible thing
is sickness, sleepiness, schoolwork - or anything, really, that makes us feel our need for shadow surmounts our need for sun.


You were made to kindle the planets
with smoldering rosy good-mornings, and flickering coral good-nights,
and the golden flames in between.
And I was made to spark hope in people
with barely-glowing ceiling lights, and the falling whisper of blinds,
and the glowingness of me.


And thus we do - you all over the galaxy, and me all over these rooms.
Both of us with our cloudy days and our rainy days and... our distance-times... our winters... turning into our spring exuberance.


What I want to know is,
does it feel as dark out there,
in the nullness of where you are,
as it feels in here, among
these definitions, determinations, deformities?


And also, your great secret -
how have you burned this long
and not burned out?


Wistfully ~ me"