In the municipal garden, the morning round used to look like a polite tangle. This week the gardener folded pocket maps of the beds and slipped one under each snail, the way a café might tuck a napkin beside a very slow guest.
We asked at the kiosk by the gate. A woman with a watering can said the dotted lines go around the tulips, never over them. The snails pause for dew, she added, as if that were ordinary manners.
A note in the park keeper's book reads: please do not hurry the visitors. They know the way now.
By evening the marigolds looked freshly parted, as if combed by very small hands. A neighbor swore a snail nodded at the roses before turning left. The roses, for their part, seemed ready.