The poem takes a familiar saying, "love is in the air," and turns it into something painful. If love is in the air, then breathing is how you take it in. The speaker, though, holds their breath until their face turns blue, and the reason isn't stubbornness or a game. It's a way of staying close to someone who feels unloved.
The speaker believes that the person they care about has stopped breathing, in a sense, because they don't think anyone loves them. So the speaker stops too, as if sharing the suffocation is the only way to say "I'm here." The short, broken lines make the poem feel breathless, with long pauses where a breath should be.
The mood is tender but unsettling. The gesture shows real devotion, yet it is also dangerous, and the poem seems aware of that. It leaves us wondering whether solidarity like this helps anyone, or whether two people are simply going under together.