Still in treatment, she was flipping pancakes
before the rest of the group woke up, the batter
hissing in the pan. The last of the chocolate chips
she used for herself, bananas for everyone else.
She was humming and the wings were twitching,
small, like a moth between her shoulder blades.
::::
I found her pumping dumbbells after a meeting,
taking turns curling her right arm, then left. She said
it was her new favorite way to put an ache in her arm
but we both knew it was a joke she only wished were true.
That’s when I saw the wings grow—just narrow enough
she couldn’t see them in the mirror’s reflection.
::::
In a coffee shop near her halfway house,
she came up to my table, said she had a sponsor
and three months clean. I gave her a hug
and beneath my hands, I felt the wings startle
like a sleeping animal. I didn’t know how to ask—
I was startled, too—so I just watched her leave.
An unsteadiness. That tell-tale drifting in her gait.
People on the sidewalk moved out of her way.
And the wings? They unfurled beyond her frame.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 1.
Mary Ardery was born and raised in Bloomington, IN. Her work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets 2021, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Fairy Tale Review, Missouri Review’s “Poem of the Week,” and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of a Lifelong Arts fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission, she currently lives in West Lafayette and teaches at Purdue University. Visit her at maryardery.com.
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