Birth is the subject here, but the speaker treats it less as a celebration than as the first step toward an ending. The opening image of a Wheel of Fate that "stops for no one" sets the tone: the moment you arrive, time is already running and pain has begun. The title, "The Start of Decay," pushes the same idea, so life reads as a slow wearing-down from the very first breath.
The poem then walks through the delivery room in simple, almost clinical detail. Blurry light, the first cry, air filling the lungs, the slime being wiped away. Small touches of tenderness appear, like the mother holding her young and the baby wrapped in blankets, and the line "You feel safe" offers a brief calm. But the closing image of a signed certificate undercuts it. A piece of paperwork "marks your fate," as though a life is officially logged and sealed at once. The mood is quietly fatalistic, with warmth sitting uneasily beside dread.