Nine short lines, one quiet grievance. In "option," a speaker looks back over their relationships and sees a lopsided arrangement. Everyone else kept them as something to pick up or put down, while they went on giving people the top place. The central idea is the imbalance between how we are valued and how we value, and the poem never says "unfair." It lets two nouns do the arguing.
Those nouns are "option" and "priority." Both come from the language of ranking and decision-making, of schedules, menus and to-do lists. An option is available but not necessary, the thing you consider when the first choice falls through. A priority is what other things get arranged around. The poem is bookended by these words: "option" is the title and reappears in the second line, and "priority" is the final word. Everything between them measures the distance from one rank to the other, and that distance is the hurt.
The first stanza is a flat, three-line statement. "Always" and "everyone's" are enormous words, with no exceptions and no one left out. This may be exaggeration, but it also matches how such pain feels from the inside, as a pattern rather than a single incident. The past tense, "i was always an option," sounds like a verdict delivered from a distance. The second stanza moves into the present, and the speaker is still behaving the same way despite the evidence.
The grammar of that second stanza is where the poem gets interesting. "While i myself / just like / to treat people" is slightly off-balance. "Myself" is an emphatic extra that sets the speaker against "everyone" in the line above. The break after "just like" lets a second meaning flicker, since "just like" is also the start of a comparison, left hanging for a moment before the sentence turns. Then comes "like they are / my priority," with a second "like" that can mean "as if." That makes the line ambiguous. On one reading, the speaker is simply generous, and treating people as a priority is their nature. On another, "like" admits a certain acting, a habit of treating people as though they mattered most whether or not the relationship returns it. The poem doesn't choose between them. "Treat" adds to the effect, because it suggests something given freely, like a gift.
Formally, this is free verse with no rhyme and no regular meter. Every line is short, between two and five syllables, and they move at the pace of someone thinking aloud. The enjambment makes the second stanza stumble. Fragments like "just like" and "like they are" make no sense alone, so the voice seems to hesitate and then press on. The second stanza also runs to five lines against the first stanza's three. The speaker's side of the story takes up more room on the page, just as their giving takes up more of their life.
The punctuation is just as spare. Everything is lowercase, even "i," and there are no commas, only a single full stop at the very end. The lowercase "i" visually shrinks the speaker, which suits someone who has been treated as optional. The lack of punctuation gives the voice a calm, almost shrugging tone. The final period then closes the statement firmly, on "priority." The guillemets around the title, «option», may be a further clue. They set the word apart like a quotation, as if it were a label the speaker was handed or is quoting back, though that is an inference from the typography alone.
The poem matters for how much it holds in so little space. Its feeling is one many readers will recognise, and it avoids the easy moves of blaming a villain or wallowing in self-pity. The tone stays level, which makes it harder to dismiss. It also leaves a question open. The speaker keeps treating people as a priority after being treated as an option, and that can read as dignity, because they refuse to retaliate, or as sadness, because they have not changed. By ending on "priority," the poem lets the speaker's values have the last word, even if no one has returned them.