Dave Bonta starts with a playful question: if a relationship ends, what becomes of the plus sign that once stood for it? The speaker follows the shape through a series of afterlives. It turns into a grave marker, an antenna mast, a scarecrow's frame, a crucifix. Each change moves the symbol further from its first meaning, and the speaker notes that even crossroads now feel old-fashioned. The crucifix has shrunk to jewelry, something to fiddle with when anxious, "a thing humans wear / instead of a bell."
The tone is dry and wry, but grief sits underneath the wit. The speaker treats loss through a visual joke, which keeps the sadness at arm's length. Then the final image tips the poem toward bleakness. The plus sign loses its vertical line and becomes a flat horizon, a minus sign, with "nothing but subtraction" beyond it. The mood ends up quietly desolate: love adds, and its ending only takes away.