Hartley's sonnet follows a speaker who seems to have died and is drifting through whatever comes next. The opening lines set a murky scene: the speaker calls themselves "the forgotten, the in-between, and the dead," and their old life has turned into a "dreamy haze." Memories slip away. They can't recall what they once said, where they lived, or even the face of the one love who has vanished from their sight.
Then the poem starts to move. The speaker hears frightened cries, then a voice calling their name, and sees a bright light at the end of a hall. These are familiar images from stories of near-death experiences. Yet the speaker feels strangely unlike themselves, and as they near the light, they fall.
The final couplet turns everything around. They open their eyes and find the life they had forgotten. The mood moves from eerie and lonely to uncertain, then ends on quiet surprise and possible return.