We sat there face to face, a well-lit candle the only illumination.  The only sound, the rhythmic clicking of the grandfather clock.  To you, darkness was like a cloak, to me the darkness was like an old friend.  In an impulse I blew the candle out.

"Why did you do that?", you said.

"So I could see you more clearly", I replied.

So we sat in darkness talking, and learned more in those thirty minutes than we would have in three hours with light.   It ended when you asked for a cigarette and I obliged.  Your face flaring, momentarily in the light of the flame.  I lit one myself.  Sitting back relaxing you said "It;s actually kind of nice:, and I laughed.

One night we went further, bodies entwined in the darkness.  The ritual ending with the glow of burning cigarettes.

The next week you were gone,moved on for business, a different time-zone away.  I looked at a clock, while sitting in sunlight at a park-bench, and adjusted the time.  Darkness would be falling where you were now.  Would you scamper from it, like when we met, or would you simply smile and think 'Hello, Old Friend'.