The title points to the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, where scattered bread crumbs are meant to help someone find the way home. Here, though, the crumbs are people. The speaker imagines a person moving through life and dropping friends along the way, almost without noticing, the way you'd drop crumbs from a pocket.
What makes the poem sharp is the second stanza. The path back "is littered / with former friends." Littered is an ugly, careless word. It suggests these people were treated as rubbish, not as companions. The poem seems to say that anyone trying to return to their past, or to who they once were, would have to step over the relationships they discarded.
The speaker never raises their voice. The tone is cool and observant, maybe accusing, maybe sad. The short lines and plain wording leave a quiet, uncomfortable feeling: that moving forward can cost you the way back.