The speaker is trying to wipe out a lost love, and the poem shows how hard that is. It opens with a firm decision: burn the photographs, remove every memory. But the next lines slip into "Remembering" again and again, as if the mind refuses to follow orders. The speaker admits that no one else could ever have taken this person's place.
The most striking image is the faint scars on the wrists, described as "fine brush-strokes / From another lifetime." They are fading, and the speaker calls them "the last of your claim," which suggests that the old pain is the final thing still tying them to this person. The ex-partner is said to have left "as quietly as you came," and the speaker seems to see this as typical of "your kind."
The mood is weary, raw, and bittersweet. The closing lines, "Healing and bruising / Bruising and healing," swap places like a loop, and the title's "Healing Never Healing" makes the same point: recovery here is a cycle, not a clean ending.