MAGIC 8-BALL

Legs crossed, thighs
cooling on ceramic squares,
my daughter sits in the darkness
of her bedroom closet, a black sphere
in her hands. She stares at the clear disk
of  its flattened side, reads the bluish script
embossed upon the  dodecahedron that  floats
in the unseen medium. Altogether dissatisfied
with the answer,  she reshapes the question,
shifting tense, inverting clauses, employing
synonyms until she is able to confirm,
word  by word,  some  truth
she already knows.



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