Cancer Suns are just as in love with themselves—wildly, freely, and laughably—as Leo Suns. But their brand of self love is a little tongue in cheek. It’s a little knowingly absurd. There’s no one who throws a good insult like a Cancer. But there’s also no one who does it as lovingly.

Cancers tease you. They don’t do so to be cruel. They do so because they can see the most sensitive parts of you and they want you to know that, hey, you’re loved even where your shame shows. They want you to tease them back. They rejoice in it. They love knowing that you love all the pieces of them—even the scarred parts hidden from the luminous face.

I love you, Cancer, because you are scarred like the moon but you do not let your scars define you. I love you because you hold sadness without needing to force it to shift. I love you because the art of holding sadness is also the art of social transformation.

Not all Cancer Suns are in love with a melancholic image of themselves. Cancer Suns love to laugh, to play, and to create. But their creations do not sprawl out into space and land on other people’s feet. No, Cancer paints the insides of their shells. They might welcome you into their space of engineering but they will understand that you are a guest always. Cancers are artists who understand privacy.

You have never witnessed true splendor until you have visited a Cancer’s home. Cancer homes are not always the inside of a room. Cancer is not always domestic. Sometimes, Cancer homes are communities or fields. Sometimes, they’re rivers. They go somewhere, Cancers do. What distinguishes Cancer homes from other places is that Cancer homes have obtained the markings of love. They’ve been shifted, ever so intentionally, so that they have become resting places for the weary.

Cancers do not impose their wills upon the world. I love you, Cancer, because you are able to transform people without forcing change onto them. You know exactly when to let others be. I love you because you trust freedom more than you trust surveillance. You watch other people so closely precisely because you understand, fundamentally, that you will never change them.

I love you when you’re cranky because you’re the funniest when you’re cranky. I love that you use humor to heal even the pains that don’t have names. I love you because you share private jokes with the rest of the world that are so poignant that there isn’t a soul who doesn’t get them. I love that you do not seek to influence people but, when the sincerity of your care reaches even those you do not know, you are not surprised.

I love that you retreat. You do not have the dogma of believing that all of your decisions are the right ones. You move through the world hesitant, as if you are listening to the earth. You do not believe that you are always right. When you are fearless, you allow yourself to exist when you are wrong and, by setting this example, you set us all free. I love you because you do not make the right decisions all of the time. I love you because your doubt is considerate.

I love you even though you will always know me more than I know you. There are entire worlds within a single Cancer and most of these worlds resist the violence of discovery. You do not seek to make homeland comprehensible to domination. You protect yourself by remaining unknowable and incomprehensible at just the right times.

You’re a heretic, Cancer. You will never become indoctrinated because you will always remain a contradiction and, yet, your ideas are clear because they are honest. You speak from the heart. You do not make strategic friends or go where the cool kids go. Your decisions don’t make sense. Instead, you embody a type of creative lunacy that remakes the world without controlling anything.

I love you, Cancer, because you remember everything. By remembering everything, you do not force your memories upon another. You understand that memories are fluid things that bend to the present. By remembering everything, you are not simply caution but also become wisdom. I love you because you understand the magic of memory to be a thing that works only when it is properly understood in trust and not fear.