Jealousy has a color, and Puppy's speaker names it three times before the poem is even two lines old: emerald, viridian, olive. The choice is precise. Viridian is the name of a paint pigment, so the speaker sounds like someone who has studied the shade in the mirror. The cause is "him", someone the speaker can't stop looking at, and the look "hurts." The poem starts as a confession of envy but quickly shows that envy is only the surface of something heavier.
The grammar wobbles at the right moment. "i don't even know you why do i feel this?" has no punctuation where a comma or full stop should fall, and the person addressed changes from "him" to "you" mid-thought. It reads like a feeling that has slipped out before the speaker could tidy it. The same stanza holds a painful irony: "it hurts worse because you'll never know." The suffering is private, so the speaker performs the opposite: "i'll laugh and i'll smile and i'll watch." The repeated "i'll" and the chain of "and"s sound like a rehearsed routine. Watching is also a passive verb, and the reason given is small and sad. It makes the speaker "a little less lonely."
That "little" is worth following. It returns in "a little more in control" and again in "little painted clay pots." The speaker's hopes are modest throughout, just slightly less loneliness and slightly more control. Even the violence is described in miniature. Printed as one unbroken block, the poem turns at its ninth line from watching to wanting, and each wish is "i want to," followed by something breakable: pots, fine china, painted clay. The sounds are percussive (*step*, *pots*, *break*, *crack*), and the speaker wants to "hear" the result, twice. This links back to the earlier silence, since the person she envies will never know. Smashing things would make the feeling audible, proof that it exists and has an effect. Judging by the imagery, the speaker is looking for a way to feel anything at all, which fits the poem's final admission of numbness.
The chosen objects also repay attention. "Painted clay pots" suggest something decorated and handmade, the kind of thing people keep because someone cared. The speaker links the urge to break them directly to "i've never felt loved before." It's an inference, but the poem seems to imagine destroying the very things that signal being cherished. The only near-rhyme in an otherwise unrhymed poem also lands here: "floor" echoes in "before" two lines later, so the sound finally chimes at the moment of deepest confession.
The color scheme shifts too. At the start the greens are specific and almost beautiful. By the end, the speaker is "filled with green and red and gray." Red brings in anger or pain, and gray flattens everything. The earlier list of three shades is answered by a list of three states: "empty and tired and numb." The paradox of being filled with color yet empty is the poem's emotional center. Strong feelings have piled up so thickly that they have turned into their opposite.
The questions get bigger as the poem goes on. First comes the narrow "why do i feel this?", about one feeling toward one person. The last line widens to "why do i have to be like this? why am i me?" The blame moves from a specific boy to the self, and the question can't be answered. The lowercase "i" throughout, the plain speech rhythm and the lack of ornamental punctuation all make the voice sound like a private notebook rather than a performance.
What makes the poem worth reading is its honesty about feelings people usually hide. Envy of someone you barely know, a smile used as camouflage, and a fantasy of harmless-seeming destruction are not flattering emotions, and the poem doesn't dress them up. The speaker never actually breaks anything. She only says she wants to, and that restraint makes the poem feel truer, because it is about an ache that stays inside.