Welcome Home

I, like someone else, interpreted this song to be about overcoming grief/depression, but I love how it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

Here's how I came to my own personal interpretation:

"Sleep don't visit, so I choke on sun And the days blur into one And the backs of my eyes hum with things I've never done"

Insomnia is a symptom of depression. The days blurring into one bit suggests life is a daze for the narrator--he's losing sight of reality. I interpret 'the backs of my eyes hum with things I've never done' as the narrator pretending he leads a different life to escape this dismal reality. He lives in a dream world because the real world is getting too much for him--or isn't enough. Perhaps both things simultaneously.

"Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass Was never much but we made the most Welcome home"

I imagine the narrator visiting his old family home. All his family are dead and all that's left are memories (hence 'ghosts'). Perhaps this is why he's depressed in the first place, because he has no family left. It's a bittersweet moment where he remembers how his family had little but 'made the most' of it.

"Ships are launching from my chest Some have names but most do not If you find one, please let me know what piece I've lost"

The ship imagery I find more difficult to interpret. Perhaps his chest, his heart, is a port, and the ships represent the people who made his life worthwhile who have left him--people he can remember vividly like family, but perhaps also people from distant memories who he can only remember the faces of but who also had a place in his heart, like friends at nursery. I think the line 'please let me know what piece I've lost' refers to how, when you lose someone or are depressed, you feel like you've lost an important piece of yourself that made you who you are, which ties in with how all the ships (people) leave his port (heart), and leave him alone and depressed.

"Peel the scars from off my back I don't need them anymore You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars I've come home"

The narrator is determined to rid himself of the scars brought about by the grief/depression--he's trying to fight against it by coming home and facing his demons.

"All my nightmares escaped my head Bar the door, please don't let them in You were never supposed to leave Now my head's splitting at the seams And I don't know if I can"

He's pushed his nightmares away by pretending they don't exist by barring the door, but now, because he's home, it's all coming back to him--these people he loved were never supposed to leave him, but now they're haunting him and his head feels ready to explode. I think the unfinished sentence, finished, would end with 'breathe'--he can't breathe, because he has been swept off his feet by released emotion brought about by his return home.

"Here, beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again"

After many years of avoiding his feelings, he now lets them in, and he can feel the people he loves like they are pressing on his heart with their thumbs. Though possibly painful, he is closer to them now than he has ever been in years, so I reckon he's achieved some sort of closure by actually accepting his losses and letting himself feel again.