A woman wakes in the quiet of a house that no longer holds another person, and the silence itself seems loud. The title tells us she is a widow, and the poem lets that fact color everything. She hears "the noise of no noise," a neat paradox for the way absence can feel like a presence. She can't tell whether the faint sound comes from the cat or from a spirit, and the poem doesn't settle it. That uncertainty suggests she half hopes, half fears that someone is still there.
The last lines turn from the room to her body. She dresses herself "in paper-thin things," which could mean light, flimsy clothes, but also feels like a picture of her own fragility. Nothing is said outright about grief. The mood comes from the short lines, the plain details, and the thin, hushed feeling of a morning when she is easily torn and very alone.