Philomela Speaks

Mother taught me never to talk to strangers.
To keep as close and quiet to myself
as a fish drained of its pupils by crows.
To think, I must have tossed inside the womb
like salt thrown over a shoulder at weddings,
wrestling with the silence of her amniotic fluid.
Tereus opened me.
But I have no metaphors for this.
Language failed me upon his entrance inside
my body, his trespass,
long before he lifted out my tongue
and fed it to the birds.
At night, I watch him from my perch.
Think about leaving my feathers behind
in his restful slumber,
plucking out his teeth one by one
with my beak.
Leaving him old years before his time,
each molar rotting slowly
inside its grave of bone.