Two small words do all the work here, and the speaker will not let either one stay ordinary. In daily life "hello" and "goodbye" are throwaway courtesies. In this poem they carry consequences, almost like clauses in a contract.
The opening pair of lines sets the rule: "Say hello is opening up / Say goodbye is giving up." The grammar is slightly bent, since "Say hello" stands in for "saying hello". That gives the lines the clipped feel of a motto, though this is an inference from the wording. Both lines end on the same word, "up", so the rhyme is really a repetition. The effect is neat: openness and surrender are built from the same small syllable, as if they were one gesture seen from opposite sides. A greeting opens a door, and a farewell lets go of the handle. The verb "giving" is the telling choice. Goodbye is not described as an ending but as a defeat, a decision to stop trying.
The words "lost and found" appear above the title in the text supplied. I can't tell whether they are a label or part of the title, but they fit either way. Goodbye is the "lost", hello is the "found", and the poem is about the thin line between them. The title, «Goodbye! Goodbye?», acts out the same tension. The exclamation mark gives the word as it is spoken aloud, and the question mark follows at once with doubt about whether a goodbye can ever really be meant. The guillemets hold the word at arm's length, like something quoted rather than owned.
The middle of the poem is built as a mirror: "If I ever say goodbye / don't expect to see me / If I say hello / then you are / someone I need." The speaker's goodbye is not a speech but a disappearance. Once it is said, nothing more will be seen of them. The hello clause has no "ever" in it, so hello feels like the speaker's normal condition, and goodbye the rare, drastic exception. The line breaks matter most here. The lines shrink to "then you are / someone I need", the shortest in the poem, and the break after "you are" leaves a beat of suspense. We expect a grand noun, but what arrives is the plain, modest "someone". The effect is a quiet confession. Every hello the speaker has ever offered turns out to hide the statement "I need you", which means that being greeted by this speaker is a kind of compliment.
There is no regular metre or full rhyme scheme. The short lines read like speech, close to someone thinking aloud and deciding how much to admit. The rhythm tightens as the admission gets more personal, then stretches a little for the plea, "So please don't ever say goodbye". The word "please" matters because it softens the tough stance of the previous lines. The speaker who could simply vanish now asks, and the little "So" makes the request sound like a logical conclusion, though it is really an emotional one.
Then comes the single-word line: "Never". It is the earlier "ever" with a negative attached, so the poem ends by compressing its own plea into one word. Standing alone, it works like a door closing, the opposite of the "opening up" at the start.
What makes the poem worth reading is its honesty about a fear most people recognise: being left, and being unable to say so directly. It uses almost no decoration. Its only images are the dead idioms "opening up" and "giving up", brought back to life by being placed side by side. The speaker is proud enough to threaten to disappear and vulnerable enough to say "someone I need", and the poem lets both attitudes stand without deciding between them. For a reader of any age it is a reminder that the shortest words in a language can be the heaviest, and that a farewell can feel less like politeness than like a verdict.