Postcard

I really think this song is about reclusion followed by depression and suicide.

"The kitchen floor" I believe is where the suicide takes place. He/She wants to get up and seek help, as our natural instinct is to survive as long as we can, but then there's the second verse which is "but is there really any point at all?", which can be interpreted as the depression feeling. I believe the next two verses are self-explanatory.

The two verses of the second stanza, (I say stanza because this song, like many others, can or must be interpreted as poems) the person is already losing track of time, maybe because of depression or the suicide act, which we don't know how he/she chose.

On the sentece "that I will concede", i guess it's just about giving up, which brings us to the next verses "I'd like to light a cigarette but I cannot The light is dead and the gas has been cut off", It could be a metaphor for both his/her eyes and breath respectively.

Now this is the best part of the whole song for me. This stanza is absolutely breathtaking!

I'm the one you always seem to read about The light inside my eyes has long gone out There's nothing left for me to say or do 'Cause all that matters disappeared when I lost you

On the first verse, I guess its about the news on the following days, where we always read shocking news like suicide and stuff, he/she is thinking about the future, and if people will care or feel sorry for him/her. The second verse is about the person's will to live, the fire, which is a metaphor for life, has long gone out from his/her eyes, so the person doesn't want to live anymore, its just pointless.

The next couple of verses are like, the song's climax. The person has finished his thoughts, he/she is prepared to go, because nothing else matters, no worries, no appointments, no rush, just, nothing, eternal darkness.

The thing is, we can take this as a love suicide in three different ways. Parenthood, real love or obsession. The "when I lost you" part possess a really whole different possible meanings.

One last thing... Did you notice the song "grows"? Like, musically speaking? I guess that's how Wilson chose to express the death of his character, something very brutal and sad but still, beautiful and brave. Its really hard to not use the adjective Genious when talking about Steven Wilson.

In the Grace for Drowning book, there's a man laying on the kitchen floor, a bottle and a bunch of pills on floor to his side.

So I also believe this song is about someone who lost someone and eventually became so depressed, the person turned to suicide.

I don't think this is auto-biographical but it seems like Steven wanted to write a song that his depressed or suicidal fans could relate to. And then thought it would be nice to include a radio-friendly song on the album which doesn't have many radio-friendly songs at all and use that as a single. It's a beautiful song. Steven's music has really helped through the really tough stuff I've gone through these past couple months.

Wilson said in concert that this is a song about someone who has overdosed on pills and is lying on the floor of their kitchen wondering whether it's worth going for help (...because their mother left them, he added)