Day, caught in the middle of the night, left its pockets open: a whole clatter of images tumbled onto the sidewalks.
In the sigh of the shop windows, the minutes melt and drip into lukewarm sugar, as if time had knocked over its cup.
At dawn, the big square clock, tired of pointing, chose to pour itself into a cascade. Its face, turned into a sheet of honey, draped itself over the belfry like a golden tongue, and the hands, supple as seaweed, now caress the cobblestones. Passersby scoop up seconds by the ladleful and set them on their eyelids to better watch the warmth blossom; some even heard the chimes sigh, then yawn, then laugh in cracked glass.
The city adjusts to the new climate of the hour: the trams, seized by modesty, curve into shy macaroni; the streetlamps sprout eyelashes, flutter, and cast shadows with a slight delay of admiration. In the main fountain, the water dreams in reverse and becomes lukewarm coffee at the slightest memory recalled. Postcards of tamed clouds are for sale, to stick onto the sky when it forgets its face of the day.
“I no longer chime: I drizzle,” confides the municipal clock, questioned with a rag by a watchmaker in gloves of dust. “I am an orange peeled of minutes: squeeze me gently, and you will see a Sunday appear that smells of resin and half-open drawers.” The statement, the curious will note, is perfumed with tin and drips onto the page like a seagull that has learned the calligraphy of waves.
Already, the inhabitants are getting used to it: people set their appointments by the dilation of spoons, and cross the square when the sun takes a breath. Children fly kites made of receipts, which bring back fresh kilometers for walkers without fatigue. Taxis now accept seashells as currency for inner journeys. Tomorrow, the inner weather report announces, a staircase will climb back up the river and a picnic cloth will learn to read: special edition to be published at the first shiver.
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