The speaker is comforting someone who is hurting, and the comfort comes mostly as permission. Early on, the lines say what the speaker won't demand: laughter, a smile, even an explanation. The speaker sees that the other person is wounded and knows more than they can say, and that they would like to smile but are afraid to. Nothing is forced.
The speaker also offers to share the grief: "I will cry with you, / Like she did before." The poem never says who "she" is, so we only sense that someone has done this before and that the loss or pain is shared. The trailing dots at the end of nearly every line make the voice sound soft and hesitant, as if words are hard to find.
The ending turns inward. The speaker admits to wanting to laugh and smile too, but "really can not." The mood is quiet, tender and sad, a gentle kind of honesty between two people who are both stuck in the same heaviness.