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"
resolution for new year 2012
you would save 'til you made the carousel
and you'd be dumping all you hoarded 'cause they
didn't mean more than a bunch of props on stage
you might even find some new ones after
jetting off to Stockholm via Adelaide
where you'd rearrange your past
to merge with each new twist that came
you'd touch down, then you'd shut down,
then leave before you'd stayed
soothed only by a hope that the world
wouldn't cope without you long
but all plans are just on hold i'm told,
until your afterglow is gone
everybody shunts out front and waits there on the street
like some postscript might ensure the whole thing don't repeat
give me back my upper hand
give me back my second chance
give me back my evil streak
then guarantee it stays with me
everything you did just kept you buoyed
and everywhere you wandered was a substitute, a decoy
overdressed, overdrawn,
volunteering last night's footprint on your face
you knew you were trespassing 'cause you lied about your age
to anybody that would hear you out
while all your smoke screens leaned from range and drained their way south
this birdhouse migrates too
and i don't think you'll ever find your way out of it now
was running away more a punishment
than being hitched to the cart?
was it you that cracked my front door oh so softly in the dark?
i've been sleeping most nights
stone cold like the shoal that you hit and sunk
but you were here, signed and sealed,
just as real as any air left in your lungs
but you weren't fooling anyone, though some might say
your trail's as hard to read as any snake's
i knew you last and least on Earth
but no one outsmarts fate by making all that she made worse.
you would save 'til you made the carousel
and you'd be dumping all you hoarded 'cause they
didn't mean more than a bunch of props on stage
you might even find some new ones after
jetting off to Stockholm via Adelaide
where you'd rearrange your past
to merge with each new twist that came
you'd touch down, then you'd shut down,
then leave before you'd stayed
soothed only by a hope that the world
wouldn't cope without you long
but all plans are just on hold i'm told,
until your afterglow is gone
everybody shunts out front and waits there on the street
like some postscript might ensure the whole thing don't repeat
give me back my upper hand
give me back my second chance
give me back my evil streak
then guarantee it stays with me
everything you did just kept you buoyed
and everywhere you wandered was a substitute, a decoy
overdressed, overdrawn,
volunteering last night's footprint on your face
you knew you were trespassing 'cause you lied about your age
to anybody that would hear you out
while all your smoke screens leaned from range and drained their way south
this birdhouse migrates too
and i don't think you'll ever find your way out of it now
was running away more a punishment
than being hitched to the cart?
was it you that cracked my front door oh so softly in the dark?
i've been sleeping most nights
stone cold like the shoal that you hit and sunk
but you were here, signed and sealed,
just as real as any air left in your lungs
but you weren't fooling anyone, though some might say
your trail's as hard to read as any snake's
i knew you last and least on Earth
but no one outsmarts fate by making all that she made worse.
Lyrics submitted by tarnopol
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