Editor’s note: This guest essay uses a composite first-person voice inspired by Christopher Columbus monuments removed from public display and placed in storage in several U.S. cities, including Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; and San Francisco. The narrator is not intended to represent one specific statue in every detail.
Whappened to me? I stand alone in the corner of a cold warehouse. The inscribed plinth that I once proudly stood upon is gone. My sculptured body is covered with cobwebs that no one bothers to remove. For decades, visitors would gather around and look up to me. To them I was a hero. They took photographs of me from all angles. Many stared at me in adulation of the feats I had performed in days long gone.
