Published by: Jadelynn Arnigo
Date Published: October 13, 2025
Time Published: 11:04 AM
Category: Prose
Theme: The ache of knowing his eyes searched for what I could never be.
The less I know, the better—I keep whispering that to myself. But my heart doesn't work that way. Because once you've seen what you weren't meant to see, once the truth spills out from a glowing screen at one in the morning, there's no unknowing it.
His phone was like a door I was not allowed to open, and behind it were secrets of his life kept beyond my reach. So I opened his phone, and there it was—a screen full of deceitful sweet nothings. Traces of someone else linger in the corner of his notification. Waiting for him the way I do.
The misery is in the details: the emojis, the late-night calls, and the hidden notifications I was never meant to see. The inside jokes I didn't get at first. The mannerism I find cute. The sudden laughter at something he never cared to share with me. I can't erase them. I can't unsee them.
My hands turned cold while the screen burned hot against my skin. Maybe the less I know, the better? Because knowing means carrying the truth, bleeding from cuts too small for him to ever admit.
I will rot with the truth he left in my hands. The truth that sits heavy in my chest.
I made a crime scene out of our love and started investigating it. Scrolling back months, tracing names that no longer appear, memorizing timestamps, piecing together fragments of a story he thought I couldn't read. I gathered evidence like it would save me.
When I asked for reassurance, I was met with anger. As if seeking the truth made me the villain. As if wanting the truth made me harder to love.
And I hate how I do this to myself. How I relive that moment over and over again. How I create stories in my head that pierce more than the ones I actually saw. But how can I not? He gave me reason to doubt. He built me a world where trust feels like walking barefoot on shattered glass.
The less I know, the better. Because knowing consumes me. It poisons even the happiest moments. He didn't just lie—he planted a sickness in me, a habit of questioning everything.
"Did he look at her the way I begged him to look at me?"
"If I shattered myself to fit his hands, would he still drop me?"
"Did my love feel like chains to him while hers felt like air?"
"Did she heal wounds he never let me touch?"
This is what knowing does. It takes away the love you thought you had. Knowing didn't set me free. It just set fire to the world I built with him… and left me trapped in the ashes.
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