in this wind, the snowflakes move like starlings in a murmuration, like the one i saw yesterday moving in a thick ribbon against the sky, which i thought first were like northern lights, or point charges in a field which themselves comprise the field, but of course they were only like themselves and nothing else.

the hedge is full of tiny birds sheltering, it’s what they do to survive, you might say they do it without thinking — that the hedge is a tangle of bare branches and hardly any protection from the cold tends to confirm this.

this wind is the kind of violence where it’s nothing personal. there’s no malice in the ice crystals that scour the skin of my face; when i was a child i would imagine i was being polished. i am good at looking at a thing and seeing something else, i do it without thinking.

i say something quietly and to no one, the wind inhales each one out of my mouth and blows them high up into the clouds. at some point all this will be over, and that is when i will want to see what they will  have become when the wind stops and they come back down.