Noon liquefies: the city wades through the hour
Upon waking, time had run off the balconies in lukewarm sheets, leaving pearlescent puddles between the cobblestones.
It is recommended to cross intersections using the butterfly stroke, so as not to crease the seconds drying in the sun.
At dawn, the bell towers began to melt at the edges, like candles that had learned the choreography of rain. The shop windows started blinking their eyelids, offering discounts on memories still wrapped. According to the Watchmaker of the Passage of Echoes, the phenomenon is harmless: “The hands are resting; they have the right to bend their knees when eternity lets in a draft.”
In the square, umbrellas set upside down collect minutes that fall in drops, chiming like spoons against porcelain. The staircases, tired of climbing, have stretched out level with the ground and whisper powdery routes. Cats slowly draw out balls of unwound hours; when they stretch, it is twelve-fifteen along their spine, then suddenly seven o’clock minus infinity.
On the Street of Bare Shoes, the bakers spread evening gleams on croissants and sell loaves shaped like parentheses in which one slips sighs. The Factory of Numbered Dreams has issued a care notice: re-crumple the instants on the wrong side, press with tepid mist, hang on clouds without pins. “I heard 3:14 boiling in the saucepan of the night; I turned down the heat while whistling a lullaby at the thermostat,” confides Paloma Neige, Curator of Lost Hours.
By the end of the stretched-out morning, certified mimes ladle up the seconds that are too liquid and put them in jars labeled “Supple, vintage of the day.” The trams bleat their bells and the city, a little drunk, walks diagonally. A gradual return of temporal consistency is announced as soon as the wind has turned the shadow inside out like a glove: smile advised, watch at rest, and pockets ready to welcome a half-quarter of a misplaced instant.
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