22:22, mirror hour

Four twos on the clock: 22:22 is the latest double mirror hour before midnight. Four identical digits interrupt the last stretch of the day with their perfect symmetry, just as sleep begins to claim the night.

Four twos come to eight, and eight is a closing number, not an opening one. At this hour the thing closing is the day itself, and there is none of it left. The doubled twenty-two is worth naming separately: it has a standing in numerology that the arithmetic does not, and both are true of the same clock face.