Jimmy Dean Inman's poem begins with big, general statements about men: we start out equal, get shaped by experience, and want a partner and a family name. Then it narrows to a personal story. The speaker says he lost a woman, not to life or death, but to another man, after trying for almost five years. The poem doesn't explain the details, and the short, blunt lines make the hurt feel raw.
The speaker is jealous, angry and wounded, and he admits it. He calls jealousy an instinct, then shows how it builds: ego, pain, anger, each "kicks in." The line "She tells me we never mattered" is the sharpest blow. Yet he ends by insisting that he matters too. The mood is bitter but oddly self-aware. In the final lines, the road imagery of "turns," "curves" and "stop signs" suggests a mind that is tangled and hard to steer, and the closing "Or maybe a Boy" hints that he questions his own maturity.