The speaker is someone with a public voice, probably a writer, who has become a confidant for people in crisis. The poem is built from three sets of instructions, each beginning with "they said." First they are told to speak widely and become a trusted authority. Then to be open and let others lean on them. Then to point the lost toward hotlines and professionals while staying out of the way. Each command ends in a role that sounds less like an honor and more like a trap: a "misery machine," an "infiltrator," a "tool."
The final stanza drops the commands and speaks plainly. With no training, the speaker now holds other people's stories like a "pandora's box," and they follow them into sleep, haunted by images of "wrists and hearts." The mood is heavy and anxious. The speaker feels burdened, underqualified, and quietly resentful of expectations that made them responsible for lives they cannot properly help.