This morning, in front of a while-you-wait key shop, a queue achieved the topological feat of closing in on itself—each customer stood perfectly placed just behind themself.
Our special correspondent swears he already wrote this line earlier, somewhere else, which is troubling for him, for us, and for the punctuation.
At precisely 8:03, the line is born, stretches, yawns, then—event—curves back on itself with the discretion of a shy acrobat. Passersby go in, come out, and find themselves behind the person they were three minutes ago. Nobody cuts anybody; everybody cuts everybody. The numbers dispensed by the little red machine display 1, then 2, then ∞, then a discreet “you.”
“I waited for myself for twenty-seven minutes, then I thanked myself for my patience,” says L., watchmaker-poet and an evidently unreliable witness, who adds that he applauded and whistled at the same time. His watch both confirms and contradicts this, which, according to the watch, is irrefutable proof.
Here, the article clears its throat (yes, it has one; it says so) to note that it is aware of its own implausibility. It had promised facts—here it is juggling circles. But when reality starts dancing the farandole, sentences must hold hands, even if they have two left hands.
The way out of the crisis? It came when someone asked “Who’s last?” and the echo answered “We are.” The line untangled itself like an earbud forgotten in a pocket; time, flattered to be linear again, resumed its straight march with a slight limp of pride. This article, for its part, ends here, politely saluting the headline that brought it this far, then bowing again, for it has the strange impression it has already made this bow.
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