23:23, mirror hour

Twenty-three hours and twenty-three minutes: 23:23, the last double mirror hour of the day. The twenty-three doubled on the clock face, thirty-seven minutes from the reset at midnight. It catches you on a phone screen you were about to put down, or on a laptop clock you stopped reading.

The four figures add to ten, which is one again: a starting digit at the far end of the day. Nothing begun now gets done tonight, and that takes the weight off. This is the hour for naming the thing, not for doing it. The doing has a whole clock cycle waiting.