Vaughan's poem is a slow catalogue of things we release, and it moves from the regrettable to the almost invisible. It starts with missed chances: words unsaid, people unmet, places never visited. The speaker seems to treat these with a shrug rather than anguish, ending that stanza with a flat "But you didn't." Then come stray thoughts and half-heard names, dismissed as unimportant.
The poem then shifts toward things that are truly closed off, like conversations that can't happen again, and finally toward what we simply forget: old dreams, strangers passed on the street, finished to-do lists. By the last line, the speaker is letting go of things we never even knew we had, which is a quietly unsettling thought.
The mood is gentle, wistful, and a little melancholy. Repeating "Letting go" gives the poem the rhythm of a quiet exhale, as if release is both natural and unavoidable. The trailing ellipsis leaves the feeling hanging, unresolved.