The speaker is mourning a father who died when they were nine. The poem opens with a painful pattern: they cried, then forgot, even while missing and needing him. That repetition of "but I forgot you" suggests guilt as much as sadness, as if forgetting felt like a second loss.
The middle section turns to a single memory, the last time the speaker touched him. The details are cold and physical: a kiss on a forehead that felt like stone, lips warmer than his heart. It is a hard image to read, and the bluntness is what gives it force.
The title says "i don't want you back," yet the ending shows how much the speaker does want him. What they really crave is the idea of a protective presence, something no one else can fill. The repeated "you're dead" and the violent images of self-harm read like panic and rage, a mind hitting the same wall again and again. The mood is raw, bleak, and unguarded.