The Sixth Caryatid

Inside the British Museum, past the Egyptian and Near East artifacts, you will come across a room.  Room 19, to be exact. And in that room, you will encounter several perfectly fine art pieces, but in the middle, there is a statue.

She stands tall, head high and back straight, carrying more than just the weight of her marble body. She is carrying worry, loneliness, and longing. She carries these, but she is not meant to carry them alone. You see, she was not carved from a lone block of marble to stand displaying her story individually, no.

She has sisters. Five of them. For a thousand years they stood, weathering storms, wars, innovations and disease, sharing their load, both physical and emotional- if you believe that statues can feel. They were connected by sisterhood, duty, and stone, until one was wrenched away.

Officially, the obtaining of this sister was legal and fair, under then modern laws made to justify pillaging and greed. She was not stolen, but freely given, many maintain. They say she was free to take as they spent hours chipping at her marble to free her from her position.

And so, she sits alone, crying out for her sisters as they do the same, the distance between them feeling infinitely more present than the millennia they spent close.

Oh my Caryatid, how they have failed you. How they ignore your pain and aching for home, How they dismiss your sister's wishes and silent protests as you sit, alone on that northern island, like an olive tree out of place in a cold, misty moor.

You do not know how much you are missed. You are longed for, fought for, by those who have seen your plight. Your sisters have not forgotten you, Caryatid. They leave a space for you where they stand, stiff and waiting, so you have a place to come home to. you are still loved, even if it is by those a thousand miles away.