A paper cut while flicking through old photographs sets off a small accident that becomes a much bigger loss. The speaker bleeds onto the face of someone they miss, and instead of tending the wound, they scramble to save the picture. The effort fails. The face is smudged, and now the speaker can't remember what the person looked like.
The poem seems to be about grief or a lost relationship, though it never says exactly what happened. The blood slides from literal to figurative: it ends up on the pillow, the hand, the floor, and finally "my heart." Details like the cologne lingering in "empty corridors" suggest the person still haunts the speaker.
The mood is sad and raw, with a bitter edge. The last lines, "as long as I have my trusty photograph," read as ironic, since the photograph is the very thing that has been ruined. The speaker is putting on a brave face while clearly falling apart.