Most love poems promise that two people can become one. "Today" opens by denying it. The speaker describes a couple as "a shifting infinity / of confusion in constant collusion", and the sound of that phrase matters as much as its sense. The echoing *-fusion* in "confusion", "collusion" and "fusing" makes the words blur into each other, much as the lovers do. Yet the same stanza ends on "the precise moment / we're severed". Fusing and severing happen together, so closeness and separation turn out to be one experience seen from two sides.
The poem's first half presses this idea hard. The kiss is described not as contact but as "a small space between your face / & mine", and the near-rhyme of "face" and "space" quietly reinforces the gap. Speech does no better: "invisible thoughts distort / & twist our words", so that "we'll never completely know / the other." The poem then makes its bleakest claim, that even love "will never help us escape / from the confines of our minds." The layout acts this out. "Alone" is stranded on its own line, indented and cut off by the stretched-out "ultimately" before it. The reader waits for the word, then gets it, in the same way the speaker has apparently waited for connection.
The turn comes with a plain "But", followed by "despite" twice, as if the speaker is shoving the argument aside. What follows is a careful list of what love costs: "sleepless nights / born of petty fights", "blood-shot eyes too tired / to cry any more", moments "slipping away, / hopelessly lost…" The rhyme of "nights" and "fights" gives the pettiness a bitter snap. Then comes "it can be so fucking ugly sometimes", a line that deliberately breaks the poem's reflective tone. A more polished poem might have tidied this up, but the roughness is the point. The speaker's claim of "incredible purity" is credible because it follows an honest account of the ugliness.
The colon after "this:" is the hinge of the whole poem. Everything before it is abstract (infinity, confusion, minds, the other). Everything after it is concrete and bodily. The title word "Today" finally appears in the text, and the poem narrows to one morning: the speaker "woke earlier than usual, / with nowhere to be & / nothing to do". Those two negatives matter. The happiness here is defined by what is missing, with no obligation, no conversation and no problem to solve. The only thing left is to "lay down next to you, / deep in animal heat". The phrase "animal heat" deliberately sets body against mind. The poem has argued that minds cannot meet, and it now suggests bodies can, without needing to understand anything.
The ending carries the poem's real insight. The speaker listens to "the persistent rhythm / of our synchronised breathing…" Nothing in the poem so far has been in sync. The lines are uneven and the spacing is ragged, and there is no regular metre. Rhythm arrives only at the end, and it arrives as subject matter, not form. Two separate people, each sealed inside a mind, still breathe in time. That is neither perfect knowledge nor escape from loneliness, but it is a kind of agreement that needs no words to distort it. The closing ellipsis, like the one after the kiss, leaves the moment unfinished, perhaps because it cannot be held.
The poem's significance lies in this refusal to choose between cynicism and romance. It accepts that "we will always be / ultimately / alone," and it still insists that "nothing can change the fact" of this morning's beauty. The ampersands, the casual swearing and the lack of ornament all suggest a voice talking, not performing. Judging by the text alone, the poem argues that love does not remove isolation. What it offers is a few moments, small and ordinary, when two isolated people happen to share a rhythm.