Visiting Privileges

I visit my daughter
for thirty minutes
every week
for seventeen weeks.
She sits across the steel table,
all ten earrings
gone.
Says she’s fine,
didn’t know women could snore.
Says she’ll never eat bologna again,
ever.
She gets out for school,
otherwise draws. Today
she gives me a picture
of psychedelic rectangles, asks
for a long-sleeved t-shirt.
It’s a cold spring, she says,
and remember,
we can only wear white.
She wants a picture of the cats
and more crayons.
Pens aren’t allowed.
I have the pages she needed
from her algebra book, copied,
because she can’t have a hard-covered book.
Slipping a poem in,
I slide these things across the table,
catch her hand
for a second
when the officers aren’t looking.