Funeral / Wake
The setting and ritual of a funeral or wake - used to frame the ending of a relationship or professional partnership as a death, with the speaker attending her own wake and the antagonist appearing as a hypocritical mourner.
The funeral/wake frames betrayal as a form of killing (the antagonist has killed the relationship and the speaker) while his presence at the wake exposes his continued obsessive attachment despite having caused the death.
Appears in 2 songs
“We gather here, we line up, weepin' in a sunlit room”
The funeral/wake setting frames the entire song, the ending of the relationship is processed as a death, and the speaker's grief is that of someone attending their own wake.
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”
The elegy/eulogy pairing creates an ironic image of the speaker's own work acting as funeral rites for herself, her sad poems becoming the instrument of her public 'death' through criticism.