The speaker is caught in a pull toward something, or someone, that has only ever hurt them. The poem never names it, calling it simply "that thing," but the speaker admits it has given them nothing except "scars and bad rhymes." Even so, a hazy flash of memory is enough to make them want to pack up and go back, and they feel ashamed that it has happened so many times.
In the second stanza the speaker pictures the danger as falling from a glass skyscraper, a brief thrill followed by ruin. They scold themselves for treating life like a test they can't pass and for hiding in daydreams instead of acting. The last stanza turns toward resistance: they stop, turn around, and walk past as if blind, trying to protect themselves. Words feel like sparks that could trap them in a darker maze.
The mood is tense and self-doubting, but it ends with a stubborn hope of becoming "whole" again.