Storm of Feathers in a Glass of Air: Watches Fold into Orchids

At dawn, the beach changed its mind: the sand now breathes through the sea’s eyes.
In the sky, drawers take root and reveal postcards written by the shadows.

Steeples exhaled soot butterflies while the staircases, dizzy, climbed backward toward balconies without facades. In the shop windows, ties grew like lianas and tightened the wind’s throat; in the squares, spoons still warm brooded eggs of light. As for the passersby, they let themselves be shod by their hats, so as not to lose the thread of their silhouettes, which hung like a clothesline between two clouds.

At noon sharp, the hour began to fold like a still-damp tablecloth, and each second streamed over the flagstones, solidifying there into petals of clocks. “We have suspended the shadow so it would stop falling: time is only a fruit that has forgotten its skin,” declared the Curator of Liquid Time, Miss Anemone Spiral, as she hung a crutch on the light so that it would no longer trip over the dust of silence.

In the alleyways, copper fish swam through the air, holding their breath, towing violins asleep in loaves of bread. Phosphorescent giraffes, as discreet as bookmarks in a dream, slipped between the lampposts and offered their spots to stitch up the holes in the sky. The sun, a mustachioed giant, signed autographs on the skin of the puddles, which, out of modesty, turned over to pretend to be mirrors.

This evening, a drizzle of stair steps is forecast: everyone is asked to climb without moving, so as not to wake the shells of the hours. Tomorrow, if the dew consents to loosen its knot, the squares will be delivered with extra drawers and doilies of foam; midnight tea will be served there in cups fashioned from a sigh, and people will greet one another with the tips of their dreams, softly clicking the porcelain of silence.