A young mother watches her little boy play with blocks and toy cars from a distance, unable to be his parent. The speaker, who says she is only eighteen, explains that she gave him up because she was too distraught to care for him, and she fears she would have made his life dim and painful. The poem suggests that he was conceived through rape, and she turns angrily on the people who judge her, insisting the pregnancy was never her choice.
Her feelings pull in several directions. She loves him and feels he is "so close, yet so breathtakingly far." She also feels guilt she doesn't think she deserves, anger at the man who attacked her, and a tired sense of drowning while still trying to cope. The mood is tender but heavy with grief. The ending offers a fragile hope: she promises to return, and says she will stay beside him "in the shadows and in the earth," a line that is ambiguous and slightly haunting.