Judging by its images, the poem reads like a list of what gets lost when someone leaves home and tries to build a life somewhere new. Each stanza names a moment instead of explaining a feeling. There is a "taciturn howl," a silent scream that comes with abandoning your home. There is a thesis presentation that seems to end against a broken mirror. There is an accent that shifts after each failed job, as if the speaker is slowly losing their own voice.
The speaker seems tired, homesick, and a little lonely. The search for "a familiar face" turns up only a chai tea, a boulevard, and a grandmother's sewing machine, ordinary things that stand in for family and memory. The last stanza is the hardest to pin down. Believing in love is compared to believing a speech while your stomach growls, which suggests hope that is real but shaky, almost drowned out by hunger and need. The mood is quiet, aching, and unsettled, with a thread of stubborn hope.