This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Yeah I try to write it out, not sure what I recall
I can't tell if it's memory or story telling now
It happened very quickly but it seemed to last for hours
And everything was crisp and clean till all came crashing down
So much fire and debris that I was nearly blind with panic,
and there was no one anywhere to turn to be saved
from the tyranny and cavalcade. And all use was lost.
And the more that I would struggle, the more that I became entwined
And the thickets & the thorns became my flesh and I was vine.
Creeping deep into the pavement, breaking ground as I grew fast
To the center of the city and up again where I did gasp
in the air, oh to breathe, and I was still alive with a start
And there were people everywhere to behold and admire
And I longed to be one of them and though I was lost
I felt familiar with my surroundings, though they didn't look quite right
Like someplace that I had been before, under cover of night.
And I found my way by light of day to the center of a crowd
and told them I was one of them and begged them for their help.
And with stones they took their aim, and I knew I would die at their hands
Where I was crowned a heretic to be loathed and set fire and laid upon a funeral pyre
And as I cast my eyes to the sky I felt your touch,
so gentle and so soothing that I knew I had been saved,
but my movements were so labored and my will had been betrayed
But my lips they work alone now and to them I am enslaved.
And the slightest indiscretions that I made were met with rage
And I burned to be free and then you rescued me
with your voice and beckoned me beside you and your touch was alive.
Sensational and vibrant and with care and your words
You say “A secret is a stealthy thing, you cannot know its plans.
You were only dreaming, dear, and now you're here with me again.”
You ask if I'd account to you the spirit of my night
And you handed me this pad and this pen with which to write.
While it's fresh in your mind.
Before it gets away
Before it gets away
Before it gets away
Before it gets away…
I can't tell if it's memory or story telling now
It happened very quickly but it seemed to last for hours
And everything was crisp and clean till all came crashing down
So much fire and debris that I was nearly blind with panic,
and there was no one anywhere to turn to be saved
from the tyranny and cavalcade. And all use was lost.
And the more that I would struggle, the more that I became entwined
And the thickets & the thorns became my flesh and I was vine.
Creeping deep into the pavement, breaking ground as I grew fast
To the center of the city and up again where I did gasp
in the air, oh to breathe, and I was still alive with a start
And there were people everywhere to behold and admire
And I longed to be one of them and though I was lost
I felt familiar with my surroundings, though they didn't look quite right
Like someplace that I had been before, under cover of night.
And I found my way by light of day to the center of a crowd
and told them I was one of them and begged them for their help.
And with stones they took their aim, and I knew I would die at their hands
Where I was crowned a heretic to be loathed and set fire and laid upon a funeral pyre
And as I cast my eyes to the sky I felt your touch,
so gentle and so soothing that I knew I had been saved,
but my movements were so labored and my will had been betrayed
But my lips they work alone now and to them I am enslaved.
And the slightest indiscretions that I made were met with rage
And I burned to be free and then you rescued me
with your voice and beckoned me beside you and your touch was alive.
Sensational and vibrant and with care and your words
You say “A secret is a stealthy thing, you cannot know its plans.
You were only dreaming, dear, and now you're here with me again.”
You ask if I'd account to you the spirit of my night
And you handed me this pad and this pen with which to write.
While it's fresh in your mind.
Before it gets away
Before it gets away
Before it gets away
Before it gets away…
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