The speaker looks back on a single year and tries to name it, over and over, through strange, shifting images. It was a worn-out deck of cards, a drowned building, a clock counting down to rock bottom. Together these suggest a year of loss and collapse, and the poem hints at a breakup when the speaker burns love letters to "him" while herbal tea steeps in the bathtub, a small, almost ritual attempt at comfort.
The feeling is grief mixed with stubbornness. The year "put up a fight" and stood firm, yet it also seems sad and broken, and the speaker's guitar seems to cry at the back door. By the end, the year climbs a ladder with missing steps, a good picture of healing that moves unevenly across gaps of darkness. The last image, pale chartreuse sea-flower poems, suggests that something fragile and strange grew from the damage. The mood is wistful, tired, and quietly hopeful.