Ann Weil

Estrangement

The mystery not
who cut the thread,
but why. A death
without dying.
Mourning all day long.

His shadow comes
to every Sunday dinner.
We don’t set a place
for him. We would,
but we have learned

shadows do not eat,
even when hungry.
In our contagion,
we, too, have lost
our appetite. Thin

a way of life now.
We turn sideways,
disappear, as though
following him
into air once there,

and then no longer.

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Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, 3Elements Review and elsewhere. A former special education teacher and professor, Ann writes at her home on the corner of Stratford and Avon in Ann Arbor, Michigan and on a deck boat at Snipe’s Point Sandbar off Key West, Florida. She is part fish but won’t tell you which part. Visit annweilpoetry.com to read more of her work.