Illuminate

(an ode to the Unilever Series)

I had been here before, in the daytime.

It's dark as the night outside now, apart from a four large spotlit circles thrown onto the walls, a tall shadowy gloom that stretches up two hundred feet into the cavernous unseen above.

It's calm here, the size somehow comforting, so comforting that I sit on the concrete floor by a steel girder, legs curled under me, and watch the smiling faces arrive at the bottom, one by one.

Sometimes they are proceeded by a long shrill scream of delight and a flick flick flick of shadow across the giant spotlights, flick flick flick as their body falls in loops and curves through the glass of the tubing, until they emerge, reborn, smiling, a great production line of smiles. Some bounce off the end, rolling over themselves in delight, some gasp and giggle, some get up immediately to go again, suited adults made children again in the spotlit gloom, for these few moments given permission to play.

I recall that this place used to be a power station, in a previous lifetime. Once, here, great turbines revolved, over and over, and created light to illuminate the city when it grew dark.

I stay there for maybe twenty minutes or more, listening for the faint rattling before each face emerges, marvelling at the joy there is at the foot of these glass snakes, smiling, smiling, smiling fit to burst, and when I get up from there to find my friend she says, you're beaming, and I know that I glow with their light.