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"
String me up
(Strung up)
She is the thesis of
a serpent like love.
I’m on the train tracks now
and it shouldn’t be long
before I cut open animals;
that know the words and sing along.
Oh, it’s such a lovely color;
I wish that you’d wear it more often,
but if rosebuds take flight twice
bury my name.
Sex! Alas! I’m a vortex
and lies fall asleep on your riverbeds.
I’m not going back tomorrow, or any day,
so that smiling treason will have to wait.
Oh, it’s such a lovely color;
I wish that you’d wear it more often.
If tree lines assimilate me,
there’ll be hell to pay.
The night I met her we felt like leopards;
we had them long incisor teeth
with which to bite each other.
Sometime after Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas,
when it was starting to be warm
and seeds were starting to turn into flowers,
we fell hard and deeply out of love.
It was neither of our faults,
but I always blame myself
late during those nights
when I evade all that sleep.
It’s as if she was the beginning,
where as I was the end.
On that day last fall
we left each other in the best of spirits.
I drove your car
through the quiet dark Portland fog.
You captivate me
as if I was a queasy aloof patron.
You captured me
and spilled my blood on your apron.
You are the bane of my existence, girl.
You are not the displaced child I met.
(You are not the quiet child I met)
You just destroyed me!
You are waging war with a powerful enemy.
Remember, I created you, I constructed you.
(Strung up)
She is the thesis of
a serpent like love.
I’m on the train tracks now
and it shouldn’t be long
before I cut open animals;
that know the words and sing along.
Oh, it’s such a lovely color;
I wish that you’d wear it more often,
but if rosebuds take flight twice
bury my name.
Sex! Alas! I’m a vortex
and lies fall asleep on your riverbeds.
I’m not going back tomorrow, or any day,
so that smiling treason will have to wait.
Oh, it’s such a lovely color;
I wish that you’d wear it more often.
If tree lines assimilate me,
there’ll be hell to pay.
The night I met her we felt like leopards;
we had them long incisor teeth
with which to bite each other.
Sometime after Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas,
when it was starting to be warm
and seeds were starting to turn into flowers,
we fell hard and deeply out of love.
It was neither of our faults,
but I always blame myself
late during those nights
when I evade all that sleep.
It’s as if she was the beginning,
where as I was the end.
On that day last fall
we left each other in the best of spirits.
I drove your car
through the quiet dark Portland fog.
You captivate me
as if I was a queasy aloof patron.
You captured me
and spilled my blood on your apron.
You are the bane of my existence, girl.
You are not the displaced child I met.
(You are not the quiet child I met)
You just destroyed me!
You are waging war with a powerful enemy.
Remember, I created you, I constructed you.
Lyrics submitted by JMann
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