To me, this song has always been about wanting to save someone from something (be it drugs, sex, themselves, whatever) - but being so screwed up yourself that you not only fail to do so, you get sucked under with them.
For some reason, I always picture siblings, in my mind - a sister trying to save her little brother from his own demons, after they both have come through a nightmarishly abusive past. She speaks to him as she did when they were young, like she's telling him a story - that there are horses that will take them away, she won't leave him (threads that are golden), that together they'll "make mother well". But the grim reality is that there is no escape, not for either of them.
To me, this song has always been about wanting to save someone from something (be it drugs, sex, themselves, whatever) - but being so screwed up yourself that you not only fail to do so, you get sucked under with them.
For some reason, I always picture siblings, in my mind - a sister trying to save her little brother from his own demons, after they both have come through a nightmarishly abusive past. She speaks to him as she did when they were young, like she's telling him a story - that there are horses that will take them away, she won't leave him (threads that are golden), that together they'll "make mother well". But the grim reality is that there is no escape, not for either of them.