My Triggered Friend

Like a gull,

you migrate northward in the spring,

and return to my life

after months,

fluttering.

But something in your distance

and the words you use to break it,

silence me,

and the space that once enlarged

turns harsher,

tightening,

and the union, censorial, forbidding,

as flattening as the winter

you flung,

as stiffened by the unspoken,

which burns

like ice on tongue.

Sky Island Journal, Issue 20, Spring 2022