Looking back into the past, I begin to remember myself as different shards of glass, all laid out on a wooden floor. And solitude, a vast solitude, which is nothing like this one; like being hugged by the four walls who bear witness.
I remember, I remember, I remember. Seeing the goddess Niké, headless, armless. Watching over visitors, watching over a past version of myself on her first visit. I held tightly to the hand that led me through stone walls.
Discovered surrounded by her own dust, also different shards laid out on the floor, she was transported in pieces only for pieces of herself to be left behind – or perhaps never found. She seems to float through the air! I believed she would flap her wings, gushes of wind fanning our admiring faces, and would leave the Daru staircase in search of victory, of her home back in Samothrace.
Memories transport us to places that have possibly been walked by us or perhaps that we wish to tread. I walk along hallways of sculptures where I once greeted Apollo, and saw Psyche being revived by a kiss from Cupid.
I dance along the coast of the Aegean Sea, victoriously, as Niké, daughter of the River Styx watches carefully. These stories run in parallel lines inside my mind and I pretend I am in them, that I am that person who walked through the Louvre away from Poitiers and its chiming bells, that I am that woman who relishes in the breath of fresh Greek air.
But I am no longer her and was never quite her. Instead, the witnessing four walls surround, crush and trap me in; bundled up in the crevices of them, my feet are glued, my body stuck. And all I can do is think back to Niké, to the art that once surrounded me too.
I believe they saw me like I once saw them. They existed in that brief period of time, they told me stories of their lives and listened to mine. Their cold ivory lips contained whispers, secrets carved by the sculpting hammer that shaped and let them escape from inside the stone.