The Sun and Her Flowers, by Rupi Kaur, explores themes of relationships, self-love, culture, and healing.

The book opens with a poem about moving on from a relationship where the narrator still loves the person who left. She mourns the loss and tries to readjust to her life, but finds difficulty in not thinking of the person who left. Finally, in therapy, she's able to recognize that he isn't the basis of love. If he was love for her, he would still be there. The realization promotes healing, but it's a slow process and doesn't happen just because she sees that.

As Kaur writes about relationships, the focus slowly changes from wanting the person to come back to realizing that she has to love herself. She says that love is actions and all they can do—even if it's just offering a larger portion of food. Though she still mourns for the person she loved, she also starts looking forward to see a future where she's strong enough to not need that person.

Culture is another theme explored in Kaur's poetry. She talks about her mother's life in India and about how she has an accent and is perceived differently because of it. She discusses how her parents worked to raise her and her siblings despite the difficult language barrier. When discussing culture, she tells someone not to be ashamed of broken accents or markers of difference. She talks about how one country invades another and how cultural norms affected her parents' marriage.

The poetry also focuses on healing. Though at first she's jealous of the very wind for getting to see her ex, by the end she sees him and is unaffected. She sees the problems the relationship had and leaves happy, dancing in the car on the way home. She has healed enough to no longer be affected by him. This healing also allows her to love someone new wholeheartedly.