The Moment You Know

On the quiet arrival of the knowing that a person will never choose you.

STILL JUNE  ·  № 05  ·  NOVEMBER 2025  ·  A POEM

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It doesn’t happen all at once.

It’s not a thunderclap or a slammed door.

It’s quieter than that—

a slow unraveling,

a knowing that builds like water behind your ribs.

You’re brushing your teeth,

or folding his laundry,

or sitting beside him in the car,

watching the way he turns away when you speak.

And suddenly, it hits you:

he’s never going to choose you.

Not really.

Not in the way that says you are mine and I am yours—

not in the way you’ve needed all along.

He’ll choose what’s easy.

He’ll choose the version of you that doesn’t ask.

The one who tiptoes around his moods,

swallows her voice,

and calls it love just to keep the peace.

And you’ll try to become her.

You’ll try to bleach the sadness from your voice,

hide your hunger,

make yourself easier to hold.

But you’ll feel it—

the way he flinches when you get too close to the truth,

the way he talks about “drama”

as if it wasn’t his silence that created it.

And then it comes:

the fork in the road.

You can stay—

keep editing yourself until you’re just background noise,

learn to love him through a glass wall.

Or you can leave—

and become the girl he complains about,

the girl who felt too much,

the girl who wouldn’t stop naming what hurt.

Either way,

you lose him.

But only one version of you survives.

STILL JUNE  ·  № 05  ·  ON KNOWING

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