Dear Eight O'Clock,

You arrive without announcing yourself — the corridor lights have come on along the floor without my asking, no one I know having pressed a switch, and the kitchen has gone two shades darker than it was an hour ago. The book is closed on the arm of the chair, the kettle off long enough to forget about. Outside, a child has been called in, and another, and a door has answered; the cars on the road have changed — the way they sound is a different way of being in a hurry.

You are not the loneliest hour — that is later — and you are not the prettiest, which is six, the long honeyed slide before the lights have to do any real work. You are the hinge those two swing on, the hour at which a day stops pretending it is going anywhere.

I have a fondness for you I do not have for the others. Six asks too much of me; I have to stand at the window and watch the light leave, and there is a small grief in it I am tired of paying. Ten lets me off the hook entirely — by then everything has been forgiven and the radio is on low. You ask only that I sit where I am sitting and not turn on more light than I need.

Tonight I have not turned on more light than I need. The page in my lap is the one that was here when you arrived, and I will get back to it, and you will go on without me — patient, unannounced, the way you always do.