I watched him standing in the street. Out for a nightly smoke, processing... he takes a puff, grievng... another puff. The woman in red emerges from the shadows. Head down, quick pace, tourmented, running from her ghosts, lost in herself. The turn of her head reveals her running mascara. She is too far away to see the stranger in the street. He doesn't see the woman in red until they cross in a head-on collision. Words are exchanged, she smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. The stranger in the street offers her his arm, and they head for the door of my diner, all the lights are on. A beacon in the empty night.

I glance over to my old friend, Malcolm, to see if anything breaks the barrier of his agony. He is sitting surrounded by desolate stools. Malcolm is a stranger now, the last leaf left on this old tree. The others have been taken by the wind, have fluttered away slowly one by one, foating gently to the ground where they lay. I slide a fresh cup of coffee in front of him, he doesn't even blink.

The woman in red and the stranger in street walk to two empty stools in front of me. The silence stretches between them. They are, after all, strangers in the night that have crossed by chance. Both seeking company after the horrendous loss of loved ones.

"Two coffees please", the stranger from the street mumbles as he looks awkwardly away from the woman in red. His restless eyes flit from place to place searching for somewhere for them to land. "How woud you like it?", I inquire. The woman in red scoffs, "Black, just like the rest of this damned world." Malcolm snorts in scorned agreement. It's the first sound he's made since walking through the door almost 5 hours ago. His face returns to the same solemn expression he wears as he drowns in his black coffee.

The two faces that sit before me are like many that have passed through since the appalling event that shook our Nation to its core. Everyone has lost someone, something, some dream. Everyone has lost their hope. The sun has set on humanity, and dawn is nowhere in sight. But there are stars that illuminate the night filled with sorrow. Stars that give hope for tommorrow. Stars like the couple before me who have experienced a touch of fate, still foreign to each other, but stil as familiar to each other as the reflection in the mirror. They share their sorrow through unspoken words, but fill the silence with small talk, searching for refuge in the company of one another. The same way me and Malcolm have coexisted alone, yet together, the last ones left.