From a third floor on Hollis Street overlooking the harbour you don't so much notice the clouds at first, just the way everyone's eyes tend to wander out of windows. Then a quiet shift in the light, then the sound of wind turning corners - then Oh the horizon is gone, quick as a radio signal under a bridge, mid-sentence.

Suddenly it is pouring snow. In the hallways everyone is saying a storm, saying the roads are going bad. Out of Yarmouth, someone reckons. Fifteen centimetres, warns the forecast. Four o'clock and as it gets dark the windows flicker black and white, like unintelligible television sets. Snow is a static, a stasis, a kind of interference.

Trucks shudder the streets, flinging salt like confetti. Bodies in the bus shelters shoulder to shoulder, faces huddling into the glow of cellphones. Flashing lights and sirens in the distance, and suddenly distance could mean anywhere, could mean across the street. A closeness in the air you weren't aware of before. Strangers stand closer together, especially as a bus draws near. Thick slush and the vehicle fishtails slightly, its movements vaguely aquatic.

Sidewalks are slick with melting footprints. Asphalt almost erased except for tire tracks, blank lines like a musical staff badly-drawn. Snow dampens sound as it dampens everything - hair, mittens, the colours of things. Outside you either shout or you whisper, every sound refracted six times by snowflakes, then six times squared, until words are as faceted as diamonds, and as rare. Your breath a chaff on the wind.

In inclement weather luck becomes a tangible thing. Crossing the street, the hood of your coat fills up with luck. Luck is packed into fists and flung across schoolyards, luck smacks you wetly in the back of the head, luck trickles down your spine. It is a kind of overlooked luck, treasured mostly by schoolkids, but it is still luck. Cold as a nickel plucked out of a snowbank, and worth as much. But it is still luck.

Nine years old, dared to lick the signpost at the bus stop. Your tongue like the needle on a record player, stuck.

Snow falls like sleep, its onset impossible to remember. Waking up to find the power has gone out during the night, the electronic displays all blinking, your alarm clock stuttering in its sleep. Snow on the radio. Looking out the window to find the storm still there, impertinent. Like a hundred cats ransacking your front yard.

Snow is silence, snow is a standing ovation. Something inside me is as unforeseen, as furiously joyous as a snowstorm. My body so warm and desirous that it steams at the touch of snow, melting it instantly, like an electrical wire. A sip of coffee shortcircuits my tongue.