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The Snow Globe by Helen Ivory
The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the magazine, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
A Note from the Editor:
Helen Ivory’s third poem in our inaugural issue Snow Globe holds a different kind of cold. Not the sharpness of winter, but the slow, creeping frost of neglect—the way intimacy can harden over time into something you don’t recognise. You think you’re surviving it, lighting fairy lights inside a dead hearth, sipping Cristal out of tulip glasses, waiting for warmth to return. You think it’s just a hard year. But the cold keeps gathering.
This poem knows how small cruelties pile up: how even an apology can curdle, how even love can become a kind of punishment. It asks the hardest question: was the coldness an accident, or a choice? In Snow Globe, luxury and deprivation sit side by side, flickering like fragile voltages. It’s a study in survival, not the glorious, overcoming kind, but the quiet endurance of someone who once believed they could make beauty out of anything.
Sometimes we live inside the glass too long before we realise it’s sealed.
– Max Wallis
Thanks for reading The Aftershock Review! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Snow Globe
by Helen Ivory | poet | artist
About six or seven years in
you gave me a Christmas card with
I hope I am nicer to you next year
in your elegant designer’s hand
on the underside of a snowstorm.
When we first met
I thought that good handwriting
and sobbing at Four Last Songs
was a sign of something –
I don’t know – elevated?
You’d sold the wood burner that year
and refused to buy oil until February.
We had Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne
out of tulip shaped glasses.
I’d never been so cold.
I’m still not sure if there was no money
or if it was a special punishment.
It’s pitiful now when I think of the fairy lights
I set in the smutted maw of the fireplace;
their fragile twelve-volt flicker.
Read Helen’s other poems:
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits IS&T and teaches for Arvon. Her six Bloodaxe collections include Waiting for Bluebeard, which centres on domestic abuse, and Constructing a Witch (2024), which is a PBS Winter Recommendation. She won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2024.
Thanks for reading The Aftershock Review! This post is public so feel free to share it.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By Max Wallis' Daily Aftershock Writing Prompts (The Aftershock Review)The Aftershock Review is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the magazine, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
A Note from the Editor:
Helen Ivory’s third poem in our inaugural issue Snow Globe holds a different kind of cold. Not the sharpness of winter, but the slow, creeping frost of neglect—the way intimacy can harden over time into something you don’t recognise. You think you’re surviving it, lighting fairy lights inside a dead hearth, sipping Cristal out of tulip glasses, waiting for warmth to return. You think it’s just a hard year. But the cold keeps gathering.
This poem knows how small cruelties pile up: how even an apology can curdle, how even love can become a kind of punishment. It asks the hardest question: was the coldness an accident, or a choice? In Snow Globe, luxury and deprivation sit side by side, flickering like fragile voltages. It’s a study in survival, not the glorious, overcoming kind, but the quiet endurance of someone who once believed they could make beauty out of anything.
Sometimes we live inside the glass too long before we realise it’s sealed.
– Max Wallis
Thanks for reading The Aftershock Review! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Snow Globe
by Helen Ivory | poet | artist
About six or seven years in
you gave me a Christmas card with
I hope I am nicer to you next year
in your elegant designer’s hand
on the underside of a snowstorm.
When we first met
I thought that good handwriting
and sobbing at Four Last Songs
was a sign of something –
I don’t know – elevated?
You’d sold the wood burner that year
and refused to buy oil until February.
We had Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne
out of tulip shaped glasses.
I’d never been so cold.
I’m still not sure if there was no money
or if it was a special punishment.
It’s pitiful now when I think of the fairy lights
I set in the smutted maw of the fireplace;
their fragile twelve-volt flicker.
Read Helen’s other poems:
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits IS&T and teaches for Arvon. Her six Bloodaxe collections include Waiting for Bluebeard, which centres on domestic abuse, and Constructing a Witch (2024), which is a PBS Winter Recommendation. She won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2024.
Thanks for reading The Aftershock Review! This post is public so feel free to share it.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aftershockpoetry.substack.com/subscribe