The speaker is talking to someone they once stood beside, and the hurt is raw from the first line. They claim they were always present: when this person was broken, when they needed help, every time. Yet the person kept choosing "Him" instead. The poem's title, "Second choice," suggests the speaker has always felt like the runner-up, and the poem reads like a long-held grievance finally spoken aloud.
The middle turns into a string of accusing questions: "Where were you?" The speaker was begging, on their knees, afraid of returning to some place the poem never names. Then comes a bitter "Oh right. I remember..." and the answer is worse than absence. The other person watched, laughed and flirted while the speaker fell apart. The mood is desperate, angry and quietly devastating. The last line, a lone "Him" with no punctuation, feels like the speaker can't get past the sting of that name.