"Letters to Eliza" is a tale of love. Letter No. 10

Eliza,
If there was only one photo album left after you, which one would you choose? Soaked in sea salt with prints of friends and family? The ones that you laugh at or shyly glance at while biting your lower lip? Maybe the ones on which you do not look like your real one at all - with ridiculous bangs, flared skirts, striped T-shirts? Or one of those in glass frames, where your face is flawlessly alien, but no less bewitching from this? Many of your photographs are black and white, and not because they are old, but simply because you like it so much. Color makes everything simpler, more banal, more vulnerable. Some of your photos are lost forever in the long hallways of relationships. How strange that you have given out so many photos to those who never look at them. They are kept in dusty boxes - forgotten and abandoned. Maybe after many years, someone's curious or longing glance will fall on them. Or maybe they will remain lying in the dust of other people's lives. Is it all the same? I don't need your photos, Eliza. I remember you in every joyful and sad moment, I know your grimaces and elaborate poses. I know your face when it is truly yours, as if some huge weight fell from your shoulders, and it became so easy, easy. I love you, Eliza, and love doesn't need pictures.

Anastasia Volkhovskaya