The present is an audition for the future.
On the bus the pretty nurse weeps 
tears like the drip of a hot glue gun. 
Everyone has forgotten their lines. Even you
are thinking about the pigeon you found
perfectly frozen by last week's blizzard,
which you hockey-pucked down the block 
after your boot excavated it 
unexpectedly from a white dune.
The feathers, you think, how were they 
so firm? The nurse doesn't make a sound,
her face is turned to the skim milk sunset. 
White threads her hair like ore, you think, 
but then also: she is so young. On days like this
it's not Central Park the bus trundles through, but
a draft of Central Park, blankness, 
charcoal sketches where trees ought to be. 
You draw closed the theater curtains of your eyes,
and the lines arrive like worms after rain.
But when you look up again 
mandible gears collapse the door, 
and the nurse steps into the space 
behind the light. Next stop! the bus driver calls,
then the name of a street you’ve never heard of
though you pass by it every day.

Todd Dillard's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Adroit Journal, Hobart, Fairy Tale Review, Booth, and Cotton Xenomorph. His debut collection of poetry Ways We Vanish was released by Okay Donkey Press in March of 2020.