Katie Foster's poem is addressed to a person the speaker hasn't met, someone who might one day love her. She admits she isn't sure this person will ever arrive, and that doubt hangs over everything she says. Her "expectations" are really requests: patience, because she needs time to process things; understanding when others don't get her; warmth; and a gentle hand wiping away tears when she is at her lowest.
What she wants most is reassurance. She asks this future partner to quiet the voice in her head that says she can't be loved and is meant to be alone. The lines about past people, who weren't careful enough with her heart, suggest she has been hurt before, though the poem doesn't say how.
The mood is tender but fragile. Hope and loneliness sit side by side, and the broken-off ending, "And find me soo…. Before I lose hope," feels like a quiet plea, as if the speaker is running out of strength to keep waiting.