"Stop breathing."
Is what he should've said when he told me to stop writing poems. He thought they revealed too much, too much imagery, hit too close to home.
It was like I was hearing someone tell me to stop living, stop being myself, someone I had given up so much for already. Hearing this person attempt to abort my aspirations when they were just taking off.

He was my muse, an art written in his honor and I just needed to release the feelings he'd blessed with me whether good or bad. I sacrificed telling the public eye, letting the world know I was in love because he wasn't always sure. But I always was and my art was to reassure him if he ever wondered.

All his wondering just led him to doubt and with doubt the more controlling he became: deleting any and everything related to him in my phone. He'd remind me no was was to know, and would only see me in the darkest room of the darkest hour of the day when most's days were already done. He tried to shake this etch-a-sketch that was an illusion of us, and he never could totally rid the world of evidence because I was still breathing, loving, writing about the love that used to exist. To delete me would be the final step to ending all doubt and stop our legacy He just needed to stop me from breathing.