In the late months of autumn,
he sat on a timbered bench
and stuck pins in the piths
of flower stems.
The butcher watched from her window
and left smears from her apron
and jagged prints on the glass.
A rabbit lay on her table
with legs like formal white gloves.
She asked the rabbit to stop
peering at her like it wanted
to tell a fib.
She left the shop
with the rabbit at her side
to twist across cobblestones,
balancing flowers and envelopes
filled with moist whey and grain.
As petals cut through the florid spray,
she fastened the boutonniere
against her collar,
cotton and spattered with red.
The flowers smelled
like decay and ether
as she padded home
in the late months of autumn.
Amy LeBlanc holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Her work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, Geez, and EVENT among others. Amy won the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest for her poem ‘Swell’. She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently “Ladybird, Ladybird” published with Anstruther Press in August 2018. She will be attending an Emerging Writers Intensive at the Banff Centre for the Arts in October 2018.
–Art by Jaime Ryan