It’s after lunch. I hum to the tune of Pieces by Sum 41. Art Therapy Teacher takes our song requests, and this was mine. Now she’s walking around the oak wood floor, soft feet in softer slippers, gliding over the ruts & lines damaged from time, tears & angry rages caused by unfed addictive urges. Around me residents chit-chat, laugh, & make collages too; or string bracelets with wooden beads; or sculpt small birds & ash trays from ready-smooth clay. Art Therapy Teacher puts a hand on my shoulder, asks me what I’m making. I’ve not made a collage since I was a child & I’m crying, hard, as I glue letters to spell “GUILT” in dramatic, slashing script across the decoupaged canvas. The background is red, and I’ve mounted on it a magazine cutout of a mother & baby. They are napping together, but there’s a line cut between them, which I put there with jagged, dull-tipped craft scissors. I used a paper clip tip to cross out the mother’s eyes—X X—her ears are crossed out—X X—she can’t see or hear her baby when she’s blacked out. Art Therapy Teacher, her skirt multi-colored, loose long, her bangles jangling, hand so warm on my back now, points to GUILT. She says, “That’s a heavy word.” I release. I vent my story onto her. She accepts it, moves to sit in the broken-down yet cozy mauve chair straight across from me, as I share my rock bottom, what happened to get me here. & then I tell her I didn’t think art therapy was real & I’m sorry for that, for demeaning her profession, but she just reaches out to take both my hands, brown eyes warm, depthless, & says “We all come to things in our own time.” The song has shuffled to some CCR anthem & I realize I feel a little bit better, the tears that just sloshed on my collage seem to be trapped there. Now their heft no longer sits brick-like in my body or head. How strange that acting like a child can release the weight you’ve held onto since you were one.