She’s not an oracle,
simply my therapist.
I bring my basket
brimming to her now—
can you believe it—
now only once
every two or three moons,
an offering of fears
laid at her feet.
She peels back the dark
cloth, takes in the writhing serpents,
notes their diminishment
in size and power.
Only garden snakes,
she smiles, her eyes
sparked and celestial.
All is well, she decrees,
and my right mind nods,
while my left hesitates,
remembers how
small creatures grow
and hunger— flames
seeking oxygen.
We are never truly
out of the woods.
Look, see the fossils
of our footprints.
Never Truly
Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, October 2024). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and appears in Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, Okay Donkey, SWWIM Every Day, The Shore, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.