The speaker looks back on a single night with a former partner or lover, and is only now starting to feel ashamed of it. Things between them are not okay, and the speaker links that directly to what happened. The poem moves like someone thinking aloud: short lines, stops and restarts, and a lonely "but" that sits on its own line, showing how hard the speaker finds it to let go.
The speaker admits a part of them still wants to repeat the night, yet is trying to accept that it wasn't acceptable. It was lust, they say, not the love they hoped for. The repeated word "simply" sounds like someone talking themselves into a hard truth.
The mood is quiet, raw, and unsettled. The final question, whether the other person acted out of "drunken but real love" or felt nothing at all, shows the speaker hasn't found peace. The realization is real, but the hurt remains.