Muse: under all the images what are we?
Photographer: two people trying not to break while pretending we’re immortal.

Muse: are we still shooting .. or are we just avoiding what this actually is?
Photographer: does it matter if we’re both still here?

Photographer: you don’t have to be magnetic right now
Muse: I don’t know how no to be with you looking at me like that

Muse: you’ve seen more of my body than some people who’ve loved me
Photographer: that doesn’t mean I’ve earned it

Muse: do you even know what do you want from me?
Photographer: no
and thaws what makes you impossible to stop shooting

Photographer: you were quiet after the last set
Muse: because I felt more naked after the photos than during them

Photographer: you know this isn’t just about the image
Muse: i know
i just don’t know what it is instead

Muse: you’re good at making things feel close…. without actually being close
Photographer: that’s how I survive it

Photographer: you don’t have to go yet
Muse: leaving while it still feels good is how I protect the memory

Photographer: I didn’t plan for you to matter this much
Muse: that’s the only time it’s real, isn’t it?

WOMAN:
So I’ve read the book.
Parts of it feel like memories I didn’t know I’d agreed to share.
Other parts… like looking at myself through a two-way mirror.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
I didn’t want to speak for you.
But you’re in the work. I couldn’t pretend otherwise.

WOMAN:
I’m not asking for apologies.
I’m asking to be heard — not just seen.
You know, some of those images…
they stripped something bare in me.
Made me wonder if I was ever going to be able to put it back on.
That kind of exposure — it costs something.
And I’m not sure that ever made it into the frame.

MUSE:
It’s not supposed to.
I was created to carry the beauty, the ache, the projection —
but not the reality.
Not the skin, or the fear, or the mornings after.

WOMAN:
Exactly.
And I’m done pretending that I didn’t help shape the image too.
I wasn’t passive.
I leaned in. I performed. I gave you everything.
But part of me also disappeared inside it.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
I never wanted you to disappear.

WOMAN:
But sometimes love feels like that, doesn’t it?
Or art.
One person seeing so much of you
that you forget what you looked like before they did.

MUSE:
And what’s left is me.
A distillation. A residue.
Beautiful, yes — but silent.

WOMAN:
I don’t want silence anymore.
I want room.
To say: yes, I was part of this.
Yes, it mattered.
And yes — it hurt sometimes.
Because I didn’t know I could be seen like that.
And I still don’t know what to do with it.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Maybe that’s the part I never understood.
That the image wasn’t just mine.
That it stayed with you, haunted you,
maybe even changed how you saw yourself.

WOMAN:
It did.
Some days I felt powerful.
Other days… undone.

MUSE:
That’s the line we always walked —
between presence and performance.
You lived it. I preserved it.

WOMAN:
Then maybe it’s time to un-preserve it.
To say: this was a collaboration.
Not mythology. Not muse work.
Just a real woman, trying to survive being turned into a metaphor.

PHOTOGRAPHER:
And maybe a man, trying to love
without knowing how to hold the full weight of what he was asking.

MUSE:
And me…
I’ll stay in the background.
Not forgotten. Not erased.
Just… quieter now.

WOMAN:
Good.
Let me speak for myself this time.

Muse:
This is where we would’ve gone, isn’t it?
This space — it was meant for those images.

Photographer:
Yes.
They were good.
They fit this book — they belonged here.
But I couldn’t bring myself to include them.

Muse:
Why not?

Photographer:
Because behind those images is something that never fully healed.
Not the photographs themselves — they are strong —
but the connection that made them possible.
She — the person behind you —
meant more to me than I could admit back then.
And when it ended, it wasn’t just a breakup.
It was a collapse of everything I thought I could trust.

Muse: (quietly)
But the images still hold the beauty.
The part that was real.

Photographer:
They do.
And I honor that.
But sometimes even the most beautiful moments leave scars too deep to show yet.
I’m not hiding them because I doubt the work.
I’m holding them back because they’re still too close to my skin.
Not because I want to forget —
but because remembering costs more than I’m willing to pay right now.

Muse:
So these white pages… this is your way of showing it?

Photographer:
Yes.
The absence says: something happened here.
Something worth holding onto — but also something that needs more time.
Maybe it’s my way of staying honest.
Maybe it’s my way of protecting both the work and myself.

Muse:
You don’t owe everything to the outside world.
Some things belong only to you.

Photographer: (softly)
Maybe this is the price of real creation —
to know when to share, and when to keep something sacred.Untouched by strangers’ eyes.

Muse:
Maybe that’s where I belong.
Not forgotten.
Not erased.
Just…
held.

Photographer:
You are.
You always will be.

___

You never showed them.
But I know you still see me.
Not as I was — but as we were,
for that brief moment we believed in beauty.

You were never me.
And I was never truly you.

He saw something in you —
something light-filled, sharp, alive.
He was enchanted.
And you were enchanted by his enchantment.
By the way he looked at you.
The way he made you feel like a discovery.
Maybe you both believed the story —
this electric dream of intimacy, art, love, transformation.

But dreams don’t always survive the daylight.
What drew him in…
began to pull you in directions that didn’t feel right.
Toward versions of yourself that weren’t really yours.

And when it all started to feel too tight — too scripted —
you did what you had to do to breathe.
You defended yourself the only way you knew how:
through distance, through anger, through pain.

Maybe, in your own way,
you were trying to show him the truth.
To burn down the illusion,
rip the fairytale apart,
and ask him:
“Can you love me not as your Muse,
but as the flawed, complex, real woman underneath?”

But he couldn’t see clearly.
His eyes — wide open, full of wonder —
were also blind.
He didn’t know how to hold both —
the magic and the mess.
He loved the image,
and maybe he loved you too.
But he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

So it broke.
Hard.
Ugly.
And both of you walked away not really understanding what had happened.

But I see it now.
I, the Muse — the version of you he captured —
I was never the enemy.
Neither were you.
You were just trying to be seen
in a way that felt safe.
And he…
he was trying to hold onto something too fragile to name.

Maybe that’s why the pictures are still hidden.
Because they were never just about art.
They were a love letter
written in a language neither of you fully knew how to speak.

This one’s harder to write.
Not because I don’t know what to say —
but because I can’t hide inside my usual language anymore.

No metaphors.
No light talk about shadow.
No performance of intimacy.

Just this:

I used to fall in love with the image before I saw the person.
I didn’t mean to — it was instinct.
I knew how to compose. How to control. How to invite someone in,
without ever risking being seen in return.

But something changed.
You changed it.

You didn’t just step into the frame —
you started shaping it.
You paused. Refused. Redirected.
And I noticed how often I spoke over the silence,
because I was afraid of what might come through if I didn’t.

You didn’t ask to be my muse.
And I’m starting to see how much that word hides.

I don’t want projection anymore.
I want presence.
Collaboration. Co-authorship.
Something we build — not something I take.

So this is not a love letter.
Not a confession.
Not a goodbye.

This is me, standing on the other side of the lens,
trying — for once — to meet you without armor.

Just a man.
Still learning how to look.

— The Photographer