The speaker looks back on a time when she was happy and carefree, then describes how someone took that away from her through a violent sexual assault. What stays with her afterward is not only the pain but a crushing sense of shame. She believes she is now a "damaged good," that nobody could love her, and that the assault has decided her future for her.
The poem's central image is the stain, which she can't scrub out. Her only idea for getting rid of it is to cut herself and hope the blood will wash it away. That logic is painful to read, because it shows how deeply she has absorbed the idea that she is the one who is dirty, when the harm was done to her. The short, plain lines and trailing dots make the voice sound halting and raw, as if she is barely holding herself together. The mood is bleak, heavy, and deeply sad, and it ends without any comfort or hope.