Tim Gunn's poem watches a marriage slowly lose its closeness. A man looks at his wife and says nothing, puzzled that she praises his faults but belittles his virtues. If she is no longer the person she was, and the two of them were meant to be one flesh, he wonders who he has become.
The poem then follows the couple's drift into language. Love turns into words, and words into letters, with a "swollen space" between them. They say what the other wants to hear, so their talk is polite but empty. In the last stanza she sits in a corner and sees him as a "rotting trunk," a stranger. He holds his breath, and the quiet is broken only by a glance that seems to say "if you wish to then yes."
The mood is quiet, sad and resigned. Nothing is shouted, and that restraint makes the distance between them feel worse. The speaker seems less angry than lost.