I agree with most of what has been said here. The "ink remains" lyric seems like it's referring to his ability to write a song about her and/or what happened between them.
My take on "I will hold a candle up to you to singe your skin" is that he is going to illuminate her (her personality, her transgressions) and use the truth about her to burn her (something like a scathing rebuke of her personality). I think this would also fit in with his ability to write a song about her/what she did and the idea that that constitutes a kind of victory.
And I am quite possibly wrong about this, but I had always thought that the like was " brace yourself; I'm bent with bitterness AND can't forsee. This meant to me that he was so angry that he was going to lay into her without regard to the possible negative consequence of being so brutal to her.
and, austinagg, I think that yours is a pretty good interpretation of the chorus - I always had trouble making sense of it. Although, in that line of thought, I think that "absence follows" is referring to her and (perhaps) her distant behavior... and actual physical absence a lot of the time - thus it would be another clue that he should have picked up on
I agree with most of what has been said here. The "ink remains" lyric seems like it's referring to his ability to write a song about her and/or what happened between them.
My take on "I will hold a candle up to you to singe your skin" is that he is going to illuminate her (her personality, her transgressions) and use the truth about her to burn her (something like a scathing rebuke of her personality). I think this would also fit in with his ability to write a song about her/what she did and the idea that that constitutes a kind of victory.
And I am quite possibly wrong about this, but I had always thought that the like was " brace yourself; I'm bent with bitterness AND can't forsee. This meant to me that he was so angry that he was going to lay into her without regard to the possible negative consequence of being so brutal to her.
and, austinagg, I think that yours is a pretty good interpretation of the chorus - I always had trouble making sense of it. Although, in that line of thought, I think that "absence follows" is referring to her and (perhaps) her distant behavior... and actual physical absence a lot of the time - thus it would be another clue that he should have picked up on