Outcomes by Mary Ardery

Image by PN Art Intern MariAnna Smith

Editorial Intern Madeline Williams on today’s short: “Outcomes” by Mary Ardery is a personal, yet universal short narrative that paints a portrait of the true colors of loss, grief, and healing. The reader is immersed in the raw motion of the pain, the struggle, and the strength it takes to move forward after losing someone we love. Ardery speaks about this loss in a way that makes us all feel understood.

Outcomes

At a picnic table before going on shift, my coguide and I jotted down notes as the therapist listed each woman’s goals. Weekly outcomes, she called them. S— should teach the new group member how to braid natural cordage. Or, A— needs to share her autobiography at night group.

The therapist taught us how to help the group members reframe feelings as observations: This is what anger feels like. The skill to notice then name emotions. To cope. 

::::

After your overdose, I changed my daily meditation: I am here, I am alive. The simple mantra had turned suddenly awful—unbearable, its contrast to you. That humid and terrible month, sitting in a patch of sunlight on my bedroom floor, I began to think: This is what grieving feels like. This is grief.

Nothing got easier right away. I’m not saying I stopped crying in my car when songs you loved came on the radio. But I am saying, years later when I think of you, I still repeat: This is what sadness feels like. An outcome of your death: I am teaching myself how to live in a lesser version of the world.

---

Mary Ardery was born and raised in Bloomington, IN. Her work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets 2021, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Fairy Tale Review, Missouri Review’s “Poem of the Week,” and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize. You can visit her at maryarder She tweets @marydery