Togetherness here is oddly bleak. The speaker imagines a "book of tales" in which the other person wants them silent, someone who doesn't talk and only touches. It reads like a fantasy of being the ideal partner, but the ideal is a very small, muted one.
The second stanza makes the point through an ordinary image: a pair of shoes. Shoes stay side by side all day, bearing weight, rarely making a fuss. The speaker seems to see closeness as that kind of endurance, being together without complaint. Then comes the sharp last line, "despair is an art," which suggests that hiding unhappiness has become a skill, something practiced and polished.
The mood is quiet, wry and a little sad. Nothing dramatic is said, and that restraint is the point. The poem suggests a relationship where silence passes for harmony, and where the feeling underneath stays unspoken.