Flowers
Flowers as a recurring image of what a relationship cultivates - beautiful, living things that depend on mutual care and are vulnerable to neglect. In Taylor's writing flowers appear across the catalogue, from the roses of Our Song, Back to December and Maroon, albeit mistaken for carnations in the last, to the flowers grown together that die of thirst in Clean, the hot house flower set against an outdoorsman in How Did It End?, and the red rose and wisteria of the lakes, marking both what relationships produce and what their endings leave to die or to outlast them.
Flowers carry the doubled charge of cultivation and fragility - what was grown together stands as evidence of the relationship's living work, and what dies first shows what the relationship was already withholding. The image's force often lies in whether the flowers are fresh, dying, or already dead by the time the song arrives, and in who is named as having grown them.
Appears in 18 songs
Flowers in the Millais painting of Ophelia carry specific symbolic meanings: forget-me-nots for remembrance, poppies for death, violets for steadfastness and purity, all connected to Ophelia's character. In the play, Ophelia hands out flowers and herbs while going mad, including rosemary for remembrance.
“You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine”
The vine element in the triple list pulls directly from Ophelia's flower-language in Hamlet, the vine of violets she weaves and wears around her neck before drowning. In the song's present-tense, the partner 'wraps around' the speaker like a vine: the same organic, growing attachment that adorned Ophelia in death adorns the speaker in rescue.
“A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground With no one around to tweet it”
The red rose forcing its way through ice frozen ground represents the emergence of beauty and art despite hostile conditions, Taylor's work persevering through criticism, paralleling the Lake Poets' perseverance through discrimination.
“I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet 'Cause I haven't moved in years”
Wisteria represents sadness and tears (its hanging, drooping form) and the speaker's desire for stillness and natural beauty to grow over her, to be absorbed into nature rather than participate in the modern world.
“You'd be picked like a rose?”
The rose operates as a simile for the prospective starlet being selected for fame — beautiful, rare, fragile, cultivated and put on display, even known for fragrance (the invasiveness of celebrity). Critically, the act of picking a rose kills it, making the rose a symbol of the ephemeral nature of fame itself.
“Carnations you had thought were roses, that's us”
The carnations-versus-roses distinction marks the relationship as something the speaker mistook for romance (roses) but was actually something cheaper and associated with death (carnations, frequently associated with funerals). This is the death of the relationship disguised as love.
“When the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst”
The flowers represent the beautiful things the couple cultivated together in the relationship, things that were fragile, alive, and dependent on care. Their death-by-thirst marks the relationship's end through neglect or absence of nourishment.
“He was a hot house flower to my outdoorsman”
The hothouse flower characterizes the partner as delicate, high-maintenance, and needy, someone who requires careful tending and cannot survive in the wild outdoorsman's world the speaker inhabits.
“Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her”
“And at first blush, this is fate when it's all roses, portrait poses”
“A rose by any other name is a scandal”
The rose (from Romeo and Juliet's 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet') is twisted into a scandal, love that should transcend names and reputations is instead consumed by them. The flower image marks the gap between what the relationship is (sweet, genuine) and how it is perceived (scandalous).
“Once the flight had flown, with the wilt of the rose”
“Flowers pile up in the worst way, no one knows what to say”
“Clover blooms in the fields”
Clover is read as a positive symbol of faith, hope, and luck, 'less ambiguous' than the other symbols in the poem. Its spring blooming marks the passage of time from the winter/snow of the opening verses and introduces the season of rebirth.
“I once was poison ivy but now I'm your daisy”
“Rose garden filled with thorns”
The rose garden as a beautiful but dangerous space, pretty on the surface but painful underneath, mirroring the song's treatment of the speaker's public persona as attractive but thorned.
“Right here wishing the flowers were from you, wishing the card was from you, wishing the call was from you”
“You gave me roses and I left them there to die”
“It's strange to think the songs we used to sing, the smiles, the flowers, everything is gone”
“I almost didn't notice all the roses and the note that said”