No Cocktails for Two
Poetry by Ken Gosse
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His reservation made for two, aware that she’d decline if she knew I was there. The restaurant was locked. Lights off, a note left by the County—Closed. That’s all she wrote. His fingers combed a desert pate gone bare as he contended with some new despair. That’s when he called his wife—but used my phone. She answered, panting, stifling a moan. He mumbled plans had changed, once more agley, and asked, just for one night, if he might stay. She told him “Take your time, so I’m alone. En route, get carry-out.” My dial tone. That’s how our brief reunion met its end. I left him, knowing that he’d need a friend, but not some guy she knew with much ado within her but without him. Many do. He went there, knowing she would still pretend. We’re both just fleeting moments in her trend.
Ken Gosse prefers writing metric, rhyming, and light verse. First published in First Literary Review-East in 2016 and since then by Pure Slush, Spillwords, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs and now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats underfoot for over twenty-five years.