Fifteen lines, four wishes, and not a single plan. Olivia Taylor's "I wish" is spoken by someone apologising to a partner, most likely a former one, since the speaker says "it didn't work" and ends by looking back at "you and me". The central idea is that regret cannot rewrite the past. When the speaker has nothing left to do, wishing is all that remains.
The word "wish" opens the poem, returns in line 2, again in line 9 ("I wish there was a way") and a last time in line 14. Each wish is grammatically impossible: "could forget", "would forgive", "there was a way", "it did". All of them describe a world that does not exist. They also drift outward. The first wish concerns the speaker's own memory, the second the other person's forgiveness, the third their understanding, and the last the relationship itself. The speaker moves from managing their own pain to hoping for something that depends entirely on someone else.
The small word "it" does a lot of quiet work. The speaker wishes to "forget it", can't "unsee it", admits "it was all my fault", is sorry "it didn't work" and wishes "it did". The thing itself is never named. The poem circles something too large or too painful to label, and the reader feels that avoidance.
The most striking word is probably "unsee". It isn't quite standard English, but it says exactly what "forget" cannot. Forgetting is passive, while unseeing is something the speaker keeps failing to do every time they look at the other person. The hurt is tied to a face. The anger in "Every damn fight" cracks the politeness for a moment, and "damn" sounds like self-reproach as much as irritation. Then comes "Like the one in Barcelona." The word "like" suggests Barcelona is just one example among many, yet it is the only fight the poem names. A real place name stands out among so many vague phrases, and judging by the setting, the quarrel may have happened away from home. The poem never says what was fought over, so the detail works as a memory the speaker can't shake rather than as a story.
The speaker's logic is also tangled. "It was all my fault" is total self-blame, but "You know I'm insecure" sounds half like a confession and half like an excuse. It is followed at once by a plea: "a way / For you to understand." If everything is the speaker's fault, why ask to be understood? The contradiction feels human. The speaker is guilty and defensive at once, and wants to be punished and comforted together.
The gold and blue couplet is the poem's one real metaphor: "You painted us gold / And I made us blue." Gold suggests warmth, value and a glow cast over the relationship, while blue is the colour of sadness, and "made us blue" also plays on the idiom of feeling blue. The verbs differ too. "Painted" is creative and generous, the work of an artist, while "made" is plainer and more clumsy. The speaker sees the partner as someone who added beauty and themselves as someone who drained it away. Whether that is fair, we only hear one side.
Formally, the poem is free verse with no regular metre or rhyme scheme. The lines are short, the diction is simple and mostly one-syllable, and the rhythm follows speech rather than song. There are small echoes instead of rhymes. "Forget it" and "unsee it" end lines 1 and 4, and "forgive me" in line 2 is answered by "you and me" in the final line. That last echo matters because "you and me" is the only moment the two people share a phrase. The ending also trails off. "At least" is a hedge, a lowering of hope, and the poem finishes on a comma instead of a full stop, as though the speaker has run out of words rather than reached a conclusion.
What makes the poem worth reading is that it doesn't pretend to resolve anything. There's no forgiveness at the end and no wisdom gained, only an honest, slightly awkward apology. Its plainness is its strength, because it sounds like what a person might actually say when the right words won't come.