Loe's poem is a short, fragmented meditation on love and loss. Its sentences seem to break off and restart, which suits the subject. The speaker talks about loneliness, neglect, and the ache of wanting what we can't have, and suggests that love often gives us very little in return. It "only vaguely cedes," as if it hands over a faint outline rather than anything solid.
The feeling underneath is quiet regret. Life, the speaker says, "slips away in retrospect," meaning we only see how much has passed once we look back. The final lines add a bitter twist: we wish for days we have forgotten, and that strange longing is "a truth of love that never leaves." The mood is wistful and a little bleak, but also oddly honest. The poem doesn't offer comfort. It simply admits that love and longing are tangled together, and that missing something we can't even remember is part of being human.