Pedestrian Traffic

The bus is a block away, a screech of brakes

cutting through the humidity of 8:00 AM.

I almost step on the iridescent flakes

of a wing—a green and sudden stratagem

left on the concrete. The bird is a small

clench of gravity. Its yellow feet are tight,

curled into fists as if trying to call

a branch back into being, mid-flight.

I stop. The commuters flow around my hips

like water hitting a stone in the stream.

A woman in heels checks her phone, then slips

past the tiny, quiet end of a dream.