Memory does the first work in "Ruin." Before the speaker says anything about love or damage, there is only a plain statement: "I remember her words." What follows is a short, intense account of a relationship that both wounded the speaker and made them, and the poem's central idea is that those two things were the same act. Being ruined and being formed turn out to be one process seen from two sides.
The opening lines set up that tension quietly. The words "once pulled strings in my heart," and the phrase works two ways. Heartstrings are the strings of an instrument, plucked to make music, but strings are also what a puppeteer pulls. Either way, the speaker was moved by something outside themselves. The repeated "once" ("the ones that once pulled", "the ones that once coersed") places that power firmly in the past, and the spelling "coersed" is worth pausing on. It could be a variant of "coerced," which would bring in force and pressure, or of "coursed," which would suggest feeling running through the body like blood. The poem doesn't settle it, and both readings fit its mix of tenderness and violence.
The pronouns also shift. The poem begins with "her words" but turns at once to "your love," as if the speaker moves from remembering someone to speaking directly to them. Judging by the text, the person recalled and the person addressed may be the same, and the slip from third person to second makes the memory feel like it is becoming present.
The middle lines are the poem's argument. "Your love was a paradox of everything I stood for" is a slightly twisted sentence, but its meaning comes through: this love contradicted the speaker's own values and identity. "Stood for" is a good choice, because the poem soon says the speaker was "left to ruin," and standing and ruin belong together, like a building that stays up until it doesn't. Then the verb "destroy" is used twice with opposite effects. "Only you can destroy the hatred I feel" makes destruction a cure. "Only you could destroy me" makes it a threat. The repeated "Only you" gives the lover total power, and the shift from "can" to "could" suggests a present remedy and a past injury coming from the same person.
The last two lines hold the poem's main image. "Just like gold I was left to ruin" is an odd comparison, since gold is the metal that famously does not tarnish. The speaker is saying that even the most durable thing can be left to decay. The lover's touch then "set up a fire," and fire is what gold is melted in, refined and reshaped. The final line, "The fire that made me who I am," completes the reversal. What looked like the cause of ruin is the cause of the speaker's identity, and the poem refuses to say whether this is a gift or a debt.
The form supports this movement. There is no regular rhyme or meter, and the rhythm is that of speech, with a few lines starting abruptly and others trailing off. Still, three lines end on "me" ("through me," "destroy me," "fire in me"), and that echo keeps returning the poem to the speaker's own body and fate. The lines also grow longer as the poem goes on. It begins with a short line, and the eighth line, which has no punctuation, runs on from "And just like gold" through ruin and touch to fire in one breath, as though the fire is spreading. Only the last line gets a full stop, so the poem ends on "who I am" with the sound of a verdict.
What makes "Ruin" worth reading is how much change it fits into so few lines. It moves from memory to accusation to a hard-won, uneasy gratitude, and it doesn't pretend the pain was painless or the lover innocent. Some phrasing is rough, but the roughness suits a speaker who is still working out how they feel. The poem's most interesting point is that identity can be built from damage, and that saying so does not mean forgiving it.