Dave Bonta's short poem starts with a strange idea of time: a present that moves backward instead of forward. That sets the tone for everything after it. The speaker watches a woman getting ready, but she is dressing herself in order to dress the dead. Her task is a preparation for someone else's body, and the poem seems to stand just outside it, observing.
The body she tends is "kept" and "treated / all in paint," which suggests something made up, decorated, almost turned into an artwork. The closing lines, "with art / with odd love," keep the feeling from being simply grim. The word "odd" matters: the speaker admits that this care looks unusual, yet still reads it as love.
The mood is quiet, hushed, and a little uncanny. The speaker seems moved and fascinated rather than frightened, as if the backward-moving present lets them linger over a moment of tenderness around death.