A man waits for someone who never shows up, and the poem follows the empty evening that results. The speaker drinks by himself, kills a few black ants for no clear reason, and keeps thinking about the absent person. Nothing helps. Television doesn't comfort him, the standup comedy isn't funny, and even the falling stock market, which he seems to check out of habit, only adds to the gloom.
What the speaker feels is a mix of loneliness, restlessness and self-pity. The small, almost petty act of killing ants suggests frustration with nowhere to go. The repeated "who cares" at the end sounds like a shrug, but it's really a plea: he does care, and he wishes someone did too. The "spark" he mentions hints that the other person once saw something special in him, and he now doubts it survives. The mood is flat, bitter and quietly sad, with the loose, unpunctuated lines mimicking a mind drifting through a long night.