When love or respect is conditional on someone’s rank, relationships become transactional. You might cultivate people for their usefulness, praise them for their status, and withdraw support when they lose it. The cost is twofold:To others: They feel loved only when they perform or hold prestige; in vulnerable moments they are abandoned.
Title: When Positions Rise and Fall Poem When your name sits higher on the page, I wear a quiet, careful smile—soft as dawn. Your shadow warms the room; I learn new light, and straighten the parts of me that felt withdrawn. But when the world tilts and your star dips low, my chest fills up with rain I cannot name; the same kindness turns to salt, to slow heartbreak, and every memory tastes of small, sharp blame. Love or hate, obey or disobey—these drift, mere weather on the window of our lives. What anchors me is where you stand, not who— your position maps the rises and the dives. If high, I bloom; if low, my colors fade. So I measure you, and through you, me—afraid. --- Analysis This poem explores the blunt human tendency to tie emotional responses to another person’s social or situational position rather than to their intrinsic worth. The repeated contrast — smile when the other is “higher,” cry when they fall — frames the speaker’s feelings as contingent and conditional...