Eli's poem follows a speaker who is nearly a year into isolation, with the dates "march 13th, 2020" and "28 feb" marking the anniversary she dreads and half-celebrates. She has been alone so long that the loneliness has started to feel comforting, yet she knows it's a trap, like salt that looks sweet until it burns. She wants to see her friends but doesn't think she can.
The mood is quiet, numb and aching, with a thread of tenderness running through it. The speaker compares life to a tragic love story, one we only call beautiful once it's over, and she wants others to notice beauty in sorrow. Even without tears, she says, she has learned to love, and she imagines teaching a "you" to do the same. The ending is heartbreaking: the separation from this person wasn't caused by death or distance, but by her four walls. She smiles through it, painfully, and keeps marking the days.