Yin yang mandala with rainbow ring

The night crew has the Corn Exchange floor to ourselves now, and the foreman has stopped pretending he minds me working late. I am on the medallion. Thirty-one pieces of cut smalti for the rainbow ring at the edge, and in the middle a circle split black and white like the tide meeting the sand. The architect wants it balanced. I have spent three nights setting the two halves so close the grout line almost disappears.

Grandmother's pattern book is in my bag, the water-stained one with the flowers she drew in the margins during the bad winter. A red bloom on the white side, a white one on the black. I copied them from her without asking anyone. Nobody here knows where they came from, and I have not told them.

Last night a cleaner stopped at the hoardings with her flask and watched me for a long time. She said the two halves look like they are arguing, then laughed and said she could never tell who was winning. I said neither could I.

Tonight I laid the last tile, a small black seed inside the red petal, and the work was finished before the bells of St Ann's had stopped. The streetlight came through the unglazed window and caught the rainbow ring, and for a moment the whole floor seemed to turn slowly, like a wheel that had remembered where it started. Come and see it before they grout it, and bring the book.

Love, Tomasz