Rocking Chair

*The stink of me made the flowers dead

NOT the sleet coming made the flowers dead.

So i think this entire album is incredible- she seems to be commenting on a lot of social issues within America. So hearing this song at first had been a bit confusing- it sounds so simple, how could it possibly tie in with the rest of the songs?

What first hit me about this song is how it's musically structured. My grandparents are from North Carolina and I grew up raised in a Methodist then Baptist church. The sort of call and response structure- the acapella harmonizing and lack of instruments besides the clapping and the lone southern fiddle are very reminiscent of the south and my time with my grandparents in their churches.

Then I thought of what it was like growing up and it hit me- this song is probably referencing Alice Walker's "The Color Purple". I made a correction to the lyrics and Merrill isn't singing "the sleet coming made the flowers dead" but "the smell of me made the flowers dead". The Color Purple is about a young woman coming of age in the South- turning into a woman and her new experiences as she begins to explore her sexuality and et cetera. At one point the main character is restless at night and can't get to sleep and a female companion comes and goes to bed with her- giving her her first pleasurable sexual experience. The lyrics seem to be alluding to Purple as they describe this grappling with turning into a woman. "The smell of me made the flowers dead"- to me this sounds like a metaphor for menstruation. Classically, flowers were used to represent lady parts or virginity. Furthermore, when one menstruates, such lady parts can often grow smelly quickly. This line to me is the singer growing into a lady and thus, the death of her childhood and innocence.

"The weight of me broke the rocking chair" describes another scene of growing into adolescence. A child is usually rocked to sleep in a rocking chair but now that she's become older, she has figuratively broken the rocking chair- since it cannot physically hold two adults. Also- the imagery the verse provides continues to remind me of the south where people often sit on their porches in their rocking chairs. Another allusion to the Color Purple, I suppose.