The speaker looks back on a time when life felt light and full of grace, with her head in the clouds and the sun on her face. Then someone arrives who "changed" her, and the poem turns dark. The imagery of being swallowed whole, sitting in a "rank darkness," and a fire burning her soul suggests a relationship that has become painful and controlling. The sudden "Crack" and the list of bruises and broken bones point to physical abuse, and the line about looking at another man hints at how she is blamed for it.
The most unsettling moment comes in the run of rhymed lines where she casts herself as the weed, the steed, the feed, the seed. She seems to have absorbed his view of her, calling herself selfish and greedy. The mood is bleak and trapped, with only a faint wish to build a kite and escape "someday, just maybe." The poem ends by naming what she has lost: she was a woman, and now she is a shadow.