We raised ourselves
over the starboard side, our shoes soaked
from crossing beds of eelgrass.
One girl’s face was broad with scars
like threaded silk. We took turns
smelling her hair and touching her eyelids,
and when she asked, we carved our initials
into the boat’s innards and pressed blades into our palms,
pressing blood to blood. We understood
violation from behind the pizzeria. The boys watched
the men take us up the hill
and everyone knew
what the bark of a bay tree felt like
against the side of a face. The broad-faced girl
would be the first to be raped.
But that night,
she sung to us
from a book called the Coloniality of Birds.
In our mouths the song
left the boat and turned to fog.
The night herons left their nests
before they could fly. They crept
through the estuary pulling
their feet in and out of the mud.
We listened to the sound of bird feet
circling the boat. The cattails parted
to take the herons in, the cattails intent
was to obscure them.
Their cries sounded like a rattling, a choking.