It’s a nagging kind of beauty, when I walk outside of the UCSF medical building, having taken the elevator down from the adult cancer center, having walked out of the surgeon appointment, having been given more decisions and the news of more surgeries, having been asked if I was an Olympic-level rower or maybe a climber, because how else can someone’s implant flip onto itself spontaneously, buried under the pec muscle, threaded with part of the latissimus muscle and a football-shaped-flap of tissue from my back, cradled by cadaver skin for so many years now as my chest rose and fell a million times over, as I flew on planes and stopped medications and buried my father and lived through a pandemic and brought a child into this world and started at the beginning, started over, again and again.

The rains had stopped, taking their darkness further east. And now, over me, those dramatic swollen clouds coming in from the northwest, the warmth of sunshine bolting through the empty spaces, hitting my face.

A woman complimented my plaid winter jacket as I stood there, still.

Looking up at the sky.

Looking around.

People – all the people – whole selves, half selves, former selves, future-unwritten selves – coming and going, on wheels, with canes, with oxygen, in casts, me, on two feet today.

The nagging kind of beauty that comes when I realize that darkness is temporary and that I should welcome it, all of it.