Kerri will sit in silence until my thoughts stop spinning.
She will pick up a ball I dropped and toss it back to me, over and over until I get in the game.
She doesn’t let me wear my favorite masks- the happy ones that fool everyone else.
When I tell her I can’t find my colors, through the gray, she doesn’t just hand me new crayons, she helps me remember where I hid mine.
She helps me to untangle thoughts knotted like yarn,
to see hazard lights on the road in front of me and to repair the soles of my shoes so my feet stay dry when walking through puddles.
She encourages me to use the voice that I keep in a jar, the words to which I’m afraid to give my breath…