Floors
The floor, in Taylor Swift's songwriting, is the surface a relationship is lived on, an image the songs put to more than one use. One is the floor of a shared home, the wooden boards someone pads across in gold rush, the creaks memorised on Cornelia Street, the cabin floor giving under a step in evermore, the glitter and Polaroids left on the hardwood after a party in New Year's Day. Here the floor holds the texture of a life built with another person. The other is the floor you end up on when you fall, shattered in Innocent, in pieces in Forever Winter, hitting it as the breakdown lands in I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, sitting on it in grief in Last Kiss. It belongs with Kitchen, Cabin and Door / Threshold as one of the plainest parts of the home, the ground itself rather than a room.
To furnish or remember a floor is to mark a home as shared and lived in, the most ordinary surface standing for everything built on it. To hit the floor is the reverse, the body brought as low as it goes, collapse made physical when grief or shock takes the legs out. Between the two, the floor measures whether the speaker is standing in a life or has been put down by it.
Appears in 14 songs
“Breaking down, I hit the floor”
Hitting the floor is the breakdown she keeps behind the performance, the body dropping the moment the audience cannot see.
“That's when she sees the littlest leaks down in the floorboards”
The leaks in the floorboards are the first fault in the house, and the moment she sees them she knows she must go, the floor giving way reading as the cue to bolt.
“I'd be in pieces on the floor, forever winter if you go”
Being in pieces on the floor is what she dreads will happen without him, the floor the place a person lands when they come apart.
“memorize the creaks in the floor”
Memorising the creaks in the floor is how she learns a home by heart, the sound of the boards holding all the intimacy of the place she shared.
“That I can see you throw your jacket on the floor”
The jacket thrown on the floor is a small flash of intimacy, the careless domestic gesture she pictures in vivid detail.
“How'd we end up on the floor anyway?”
Ending up on the floor is desire and disarray at once, two people brought down to the ground in the heat of the night and unsure how they got there.
“I'm here on the kitchen floor, you call, but I won't hear it”
Being down on the kitchen floor is where the heartbreak puts her, sunk to the ground in the middle of the home while the call she will not answer rings out.
“I see me padding 'cross your wooden floors with my Eagles t-shirt”
Padding barefoot across his wooden floors is the daydream of a shared morning, the floor standing for the easy domestic life she imagines but keeps at arm's length.
“floors of a cabin creaking under my step”
The cabin floor creaking under her step sets the lonely interior of the song, the bare boards marking the small shut-in world she moves through.
“Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor”
The candle wax and Polaroids left on the hardwood floor are the morning-after debris of a shared home, the floor holding the leftovers of the night and the promise to stay through the cleanup.
“When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors”
Dropping bags on apartment floors is the first moment of a new home, the bare floor the starting point of a life about to be built.
“You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now if only you had seen”
Being shattered on the floor pictures a person broken apart by their own undoing, the floor the lowest point they have fallen to.
“I'll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes”
Sitting on the floor in his clothes is grief made small and physical, the speaker sinking to the ground to stay close to what is gone.
“Counting my footsteps, praying the floor won't fall through again”
Praying the floor won't fall through turns the ground itself unsafe, the home no longer solid under a love that keeps giving way.