Nightcap
 
Discarding caution at the midnight hour,
He made his bold pronouncement via phone,
Encouraged by a too-tall whiskey sour
And urgent echoes from a night alone.
 
I see…was all he got for his confession,
But such replies can prove confusing when
A poet's long-sequestered love obsession
Goes public with the tongue, and not the pen.
 
But still he hoped for more— for words withheld
Until she knew he felt the same way, too.
He sat and waited and, as silence swelled,
He shrank beneath the tone of her adieu.  
 
She never said good-bye— her answer was
The proxy droning of a dial-tone buzz.