Two people spend a lazy day pressing flowers inside stolen poetry books, and the poem follows what that small act comes to mean. The speaker recalls talking about theft and picking, about the thrill of taking something and the odd question of who really owns it. The images are soft and fading: "evanescing colours," "broken corollas," light that "bends, blends & divides." Even the scattered layout on the page seems to drift the way the afternoon does.
The mood is tender and wistful, with a quiet sadness underneath. The speaker accepts that wasted time isn't a wasted life, yet admits that their ideas about "true beauty" make living difficult, as if loving fragile, fleeting things leaves you a little exposed. The last couplet cuts through the reflection with a simple, vulnerable bargain: "if you promise to stay / I'll promise not to leave." After all the talk of fading, it reads as a plea for something that lasts.