like it’s a movie,

and my intuition is a helpless audience member

watching everything collapse

around me, shouting,

watch out!

and the words

falling against the white sheet

of the screen.

she screams,

you cannot trust them,

you cannot stay!

and pounds her fists

on the armrests as i do—

blindly, hopefully—

and she wipes tears

from her eyes as

i grieve the betrayal

and the ending.

she pleads,

you know better than this,

you know this is not good for you,

and begs on her knees

as i question the obvious,

as i convince myself otherwise.

and when i learn my lesson,

she is there to congratulate me,

to tell me through the screen,

you’re getting there, sweetheart.

you’ll learn to listen to me eventually.

you’ll know

when it’s time

for you to go.

it will begin

as a small prick

in your stomach.

a tiny whisper

in the back

of your mind.

whether or not

you go is up to you.

but no matter

how long you deny it,

that sensation will

only grow,

until it is coursing

through your veins

and screaming in your head.

at some point,

you will have no choice

but to listen to it.

—you can’t ignore it forever

it is always painful

when the person you assumed

would betray you ends up

proving you right,

but trust me on this:

it is far less painful

to be proven right

from a distance

than to be caught in

the blast at close range.

—set your boundaries

if you cannot trust yourself,

who else can you believe in?

only you can truly know

what it is your soul wants.

don’t let somebody take

that certainty from you.

don’t let somebody try

to tell you that they know

what it is you want.

sometime during the night, you awake to find moonlight streaming across your sheets, painting your room and skin in silver. you open your blinds and stare up at the night sky. you wonder about the stars and the moon. how peaceful it must feel to always know who you are. you wonder if the moon ever felt like she couldn’t trust the tides, like she was afraid they would one day stop pushing and pulling as she willed them to. you think of your mother, who you used to think knew everything and then learned otherwise, how she flailed when you reached adulthood and danced out of her grasp, becoming your own person. you think of your ex, how they told you over and over again that you were crazy. that you didn’t know what you were talking about. you think of the way you have doubted every choice you’ve made since you turned 13. since you fell in love. since you realized life did not exist in black and white.

when you were young, trusting your gut seemed easy. you chose the toy, the outfit, the game, with ease. nothing was complicated. or at least, nothing was so complicated that the choice became impossible. you ran when you felt afraid. you screamed when you were angry. you cried when you were sad. you laughed when you were happy. you didn’t analyze how you felt; you simply reacted.