"why don't you talk, beautiful?"

and she'd shrugged
even though she had known,
she pretended as if she didn't.

her reasoning behind it might've been jarring to some, the fact that the painter had so negatively affected her disposition...
the fact that she herself took her words away so he never had the pleasure of keeping them.

she'd barely spoken around him,
mostly sighed of pain and begs to s t o p
but never words never anything as beautiful as a simple hello.

because he could take everything but she wouldn't let him destroy her voice... she obliterated it herself.