The speaker dreams of a beloved pet, most likely a dog or cat given the fur and the limping, who has died after a painful illness. In the dream she is healthy again: her eyes are bright, her coat is soft, and she moves without trouble. The poem sets these images against the memory of how she looked when she was sick, with pain in her eyes, fur falling out, and a body that could barely walk. Each pair of lines shows what has been given back and what has been taken away.
The feeling is tender and simple at first. The short lines about missing and loving each other are plain, almost childlike, and they sound like pure relief. "I was full" suggests the speaker's grief has briefly been eased. Then the last line cuts it off. "Then I woke up" returns in the final line, and the title, "Nope," reads as the speaker's reaction to losing her all over again. The mood is bittersweet, ending in a quiet, heavy sadness.