Poison
Poison and venom as something toxic that works from the inside, whether swallowed, spread through a source everyone draws on, or carried in the bite of an enemy. In Would've, Could've, Should've the speaker casts herself as the poison the older man should have tasted and spat out, his failure to recoil marking his guilt. In Getaway Car one man poisons the well and the corruption spreads until it is every man for himself. In Cassandra the cell fills with snakes whose venom stands for the liars spreading bile about the speaker. The Fate of Ophelia reaches for Hamlet's poison in the ear and Macbeth's bed of scorpions, venom that steals sanity, while The Prophecy draws poison blood from the pricked hand of the Sleeping Beauty tale.
Poison names harm that is taken in rather than struck from outside, corruption that contaminates a whole source, words that work like venom, a wrongness that should have been obvious on the first taste. Its force often lies in who fails to spit it out, and in the slow certainty that what has been swallowed is already doing its work.
Appears in 7 songs
“But love was a cold bed full of scorpions The venom stole her sanity”
Poison/venom represents the destructive force of patriarchal love that drives Ophelia to madness, connecting to the play Hamlet where King Hamlet is killed by poison poured in his ear, and to Macbeth's 'bed of scorpions.'
“So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say”
The snakes operate simultaneously as mythological symbols of prophecy (from the Cassandra and Apollo traditions), as metaphors for the liars and poisonous accusers surrounding the speaker, as medieval symbols of deceitful speech (forked tongue), and as biographical reference to the snake emoji attacks on Taylor's social media.
“I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone”
Poison represents self-inflicted harm during the retreat from conflict. Rather than engaging with the other person's peace offering (the treaties), the speaker withdraws and poisons herself, the relationship's damage is turned inward. Community readers gloss the solitary poison through the adage that unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die: the resentment nursed in seclusion harms only the one holding it.
“If you tasted poison, you could've Spit me out at the first chance”
Poison as a metaphor for the speaker herself, she should have been toxic to the older man, something he would spit out immediately because of her age, but he didn't. The metaphor frames the speaker's youth as something the older man should have recognised as harmful or inappropriate.
“He poisoned the well, I was lyin' to myself”
Poison as the corruption of the first relationship, 'he poisoned the well', the first man destroyed the foundation of their relationship, which gave the speaker her reason to flee. The second instance shifts to 'every man for himself,' showing the poison has spread to affect all three parties.
“Poison blood from the wound of the pricked hand”
The pricked hand evokes Sleeping Beauty, the fairy tale prophecy of being pricked and falling into sleep until true love arrives. The poison blood is the consequence of the prophecy working itself out. The speaker is in the Sleeping Beauty state, waiting for the prince who will awaken her.
“Or the violence of the dog days”
Poison as a folklore image, the belief that anything you drink can turn to poison during the dog days, representing the speaker's experience of everything in her life becoming toxic.