Puzzles at the shelter

 
“I want to tell you my story,” he said.
“You make me feel calm.”
I just passed him a piece of the barn
and stayed silent while he talked.
A story of childhood abuse,
riddled with confusing snippets from the news of the day,
veering from sad
  to implausible
    to factually inaccurate,
      famous names dropped in for shock value --
and hurt laced throughout.

I am not a therapist,
and nothing I can do can fix this.
But,
I can give him all the red barn pieces
while I focus on this rooster,
and though the details are clearly insane,
marred by years of trauma
  and mental illness
    and who knows what substances,
it costs me nothing to listen.
Who am I to question his reality?
The story beneath the story
--the one about the wounded child--
that story is honest,
true,
familiar.

So I sit and listen to his heart
as we sit side by side,
with 1000 pieces of a barnyard
to keep us both calm.