The poem follows a bruise through its life, from the first red mark to the moment it vanishes. Each stage gets a colour: red, purple, black, green, yellow. Reading them in order feels like watching time pass on the skin.
The speaker's tone is cool and observant, but one phrase stands out: "that sickening, infested color." The word "infested" makes the fading yellow sound like something crawling or rotting, not like healing. That suggests the speaker feels disgust, and maybe shame, when looking at the mark. The bruise is more than a bruise, since it sits on "your skin," and the poem speaks directly to "you."
The final lines, "seeps back... and disappears," are quiet and a little unsettling. The mark goes away, but the poem hints that disappearing isn't the same as being undone. The mood is bleak and uneasy, with a slow, tired kind of endurance. We can't tell what caused the bruise, and the poem leaves that open.