Nettle's poem is a sequence of haikus, each one built from three prompt words that appear above it. Those words act like seeds: "Time, drains, innocent" becomes a tiny story about a child losing innocence, and "Dots, sprinkle, sadness" turns into dark chocolate bits spelling out sadness on a cake. The sweetness of the cake makes the sadness feel oddly intimate, even a little darkly funny.
As the poems go on, the speaker moves from observing life in general to describing their own feelings. They curl up in a cocoon of leaves to hide from "sharp claws," feel their muscles tense with the memory of being hunted, and lie forgotten in a circle closed off from the world. The last haiku ends with the speaker looking helplessly into a mirror and seeing only "heavy clouded fog."
The mood is lonely, anxious, and heavy, but it is also quiet and controlled. The short form makes each feeling land like a single sharp breath.