The opening line works by never naming what happened. "The track was carved too shallow to follow" turns a self-inflicted wound into a path, something cut into the body that was meant to be walked to its end. The poem is about the aftermath of a suicide attempt, and about the slow, unglamorous business of living on afterwards. All we know about "wordsforghosts" is the name, so it's safest to talk about the speaker rather than the writer. The speaker's feelings move from shame to a cautious, conditional hope.
The first stanza is full of small, domestic details. The water is "warmer than blood", a comparison that sounds almost tender, as though the scene were comforting rather than dangerous. Then comes the "bandage / of elastic bands & any paper / to be found", an improvised, clumsy dressing that suggests panic and half-hearted rescue. "Dreamless sleep" pushes the sense of blankness further. The morning that follows is "a red-stained scene / of failure", and the poem's most painful paradox sits in the next lines. The attempt "missed its path by an inch, / & lead instead to survival", yet survival is felt as failure. The wordplay is exact: the track was "too shallow", but the shame is "deeper". The shame cuts further than the wound did.
Silence follows: "Weeks passed without a word." Nothing is explained, and the gap says as much as an explanation would. Then the imagery changes. "Where the track ends", the speaker finds "something" that is "beautiful & trembling with life, / in unknowing defiance of winter." The poem never says what the something is. It could be a plant, a bud, or a thing in the speaker's own body, and the vagueness lets it stand for any small sign of life. The key word is "unknowing". The thing doesn't choose to survive and isn't brave. It simply carries on, which quietly reframes the speaker's own survival. The title, "Different colours, different shades", points the same way. After the single stain of red, the poem suggests that the speaker's feelings, and the way back, can't be sorted into black and white.
The last movement brings in a "you" for the first time. Another morning arrives, but this one is marked by "the smell of your skin", a warm, close sense detail that answers the earlier red-stained morning. Then the hope itself: "that the journey would never be / attempted again". The sentence doesn't stop there. It continues, "until the time was right / & the endless night would arrive / in due time." One reading is that the speaker no longer wants to hurry death, only to wait for it to come naturally. The "endless night" echoes the "dreamless sleep" and the winter, but it has been moved from a destination to something far off. The contradiction between "never" and "until" is honest rather than neat, since recovery here is not a triumphant promise. The last line, "in due time", sits alone and quiet, and the poem fades out rather than ending on a flourish.
The form supports this. There is no rhyme and no regular metre, and the line lengths wander the way thoughts do. The ampersands replace "and" throughout, giving the voice a hurried, jotted-down feel, like notes written close to the events. The stanzas thin out as the poem goes on, from the long, crowded middle to the single lines at the end, so the ending seems to leave breathing space. The enjambment in "a shame deeper / than the track" makes the reader fall a little, just as the shame does.
What makes the poem worth reading is its restraint. It doesn't glamorise the attempt or promise a cure. Its hope is small and physical: something trembling in the cold, the smell of a person's skin. It also allows the speaker to feel shame and tentative hope at once. Poems on this subject can be hard to read, and if this one touches something close to home, talking to a trusted adult or friend is a good next step.