LES PRINTEMPS ❋ Mia-Francesca McAuslan

Leonard Cohen compared spring in Montreal to an autopsy,

he said: everyone wants to see inside of the frozen mammoth

we took the back steps to the sludgy garden

we went through the neighbour’s house, twice

on the wooden table, was a head of salmon

the tall, black dog snatched it from the plate

her big body quivered like a bear.

I am haunted by full heads of fish.

One sat outside of my brother’s door in the far north, for the whole week before I left.

Through all the muck in the alley,
the melted snow
the crisp husks of dead corn
the exposed winter earth
the green bulbs shooting
through the wet surface
of the recent
spring snowstorm,

we can’t get back inside.

I hold on too tight
to moments,
and this makes me
unforgivable.

There are so many things
left behind in the
dystopian Montreal spring.
There are eighteen shoes
on our street.
There is a Toshiba laptop
with no keys.
There is you and there is me.
There is spring
and there is you
and there is me
and we’ve been living inside
the rib cage
of this dead, frozen thing.