A speaker sits on a park bench that used to belong to two people, and now belongs only to memory. The opening line, "where it would've happened," hints that something important took place here, or was meant to, though the poem never says what. The speaker seems to be dealing with the loss of someone, though whether through a breakup or something else is left open.
The images are small and physical. Wind rushes past "like honking cars at congestion," a noisy, restless picture that contrasts with the speaker's stillness on the "seasoned" wood. The sparkling eyes and lowering tides suggest tears rising and then ebbing. Even touch brings back the other person's voice. The final two lines repeat "alone," and that repetition does the emotional work, pressing the absence home. The mood is quiet, wistful, and a little raw: someone returning to a familiar place and finding it emptied out.