• Facebook
• Instagram

Mary Ardery

__________

For A Moment

The day you detoxed on the trail was also
the day we found a monarch. It struggled
at our feet as we sat eating lunch, tuna
you couldn’t keep down. With your bile-
chapped lips, you named the creature
Athena, and gently, you took her body
twitching in your hand.

                                        All day we hiked.
With each dry heave, you bowed your
head and held Athena up like someone
praying for forgiveness. You found moss
beneath a rhododendron and laid her to rest.
—For a moment, I can remember you
as mourning, instead of mourned.

__________

The Woman in the Woods

has forsaken the men in the city. The woman
in the woods sleeps on a bed of pine needles,
plush, vast, and she does not call it king-sized.
The woman in the woods wakes each morning
and bowdrills a fire for tea. When it snows,
she fashions a sleigh and tames a deer to pull
her through the forest cold—quiet and otherwise
still. Sometimes the woman in the woods
misses her books. Then she remembers metro
cards and electric bills, cash registers and broken
elevators. Before she left the city, the woman
in the woods chopped her hair and buried it
beneath a skyscraper, the tallest, shiniest one.
I’m telling you this in case you care, in case
you miss her enough to dig it up and sew a doll
in her image. Because the woman in the woods
is not coming back.

__________

Mary Ardery is from Bloomington, IN. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Kettle Blue Review, Gravel, RHINO, and other journals. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Visit her at maryardery.com.

__________

<< Back Next >>

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.