So often there is snow – how can there not be?

Random anxious flakes, then swirls, jackets

shaken in hallways, the brims of hats
scooping at snow like saucers – this is

winter after all, there is dark to follow,

there are footprints in snow to frighten
because never heard. One guesses so much.

Further on in the movie more snow is almost

certain, this is the kind of story
after all which intends you to shiver,

to say, ‘Out there, in the naked daylight

where worse things happen, worse by far.
There is nevertheless the luck of not

being prepared.’ With snow we are always

awaiting more, where the worst can be
itself: the ribbon of blood flowing

from beneath one’s cuff, the gasped map

on the hansom’s glass. Her beseeching, ‘Jack?’