My take is that the song is about a man who loves a young woman (perhaps it’s romantic love or perhaps it’s paternal or fraternal love), and because he loves her, he thinks he has to protect her from the world, but she grows to see this behavior (rightly or wrongly) as malicious, believing he’s holding her back, that he’s keeping her in a cage. Eventually it builds up to the point that she attempts suicide because she believes that is the only means she has to escape. I think she survives, but her actions make the narrator reevaluate his own actions towards her and he realizes that intentionally or not, he has been causing her harm. And he experiences great regret over how he treated her, because he never meant to hurt her, he thought he was acting in her best interests. So he realizes he has to let her go, to let her fly from out his arms. Thematically, I think it’s not too dissimilar from Blues For Baby And Me. I think they’re both about men having to let women they love and want to protect go.
My take is that the song is about a man who loves a young woman (perhaps it’s romantic love or perhaps it’s paternal or fraternal love), and because he loves her, he thinks he has to protect her from the world, but she grows to see this behavior (rightly or wrongly) as malicious, believing he’s holding her back, that he’s keeping her in a cage. Eventually it builds up to the point that she attempts suicide because she believes that is the only means she has to escape. I think she survives, but her actions make the narrator reevaluate his own actions towards her and he realizes that intentionally or not, he has been causing her harm. And he experiences great regret over how he treated her, because he never meant to hurt her, he thought he was acting in her best interests. So he realizes he has to let her go, to let her fly from out his arms. Thematically, I think it’s not too dissimilar from Blues For Baby And Me. I think they’re both about men having to let women they love and want to protect go.