The speaker talks to a sheet of paper that was once blank and perfect and is now covered in ink, creased and crumpled. Nothing about it is clean anymore. The poem treats the page almost like a person: it has "ivory skin," a "spine," and a body that bruises when ink spills. The marks look like wounds and "messy tattoos," which makes the damage feel painful rather than simply untidy.
The speaker doesn't blame the paper. The harm comes from "the misuse of words," so the fault lies with whoever wrote badly, carelessly, or cruelly. The final lines say the page has been dumped in a "hollow metal cage / for the unwanted," most likely a wastebasket or bin. The mood is sad and tender, with a quiet sympathy for something ruined and discarded through no fault of its own. The poem can also be read as being about people who are marked by others' words and then cast aside.