Skeletons
Skeletons and bones are the leftovers of the dead, and Taylor uses them for a past that's still hanging around. In cowboy like me the old phrase about skeletons in the closet gets taken literally and brought to life, two people's buried secrets "plotting" together to wreck a real relationship, so their histories of lies become active characters working against them. In ivy the bones are quieter, the lovers meeting "where the spirit meets the bones", at the grave where only bones remain, which sets the romance right at the site of death. The shared idea is that what's dead and supposedly hidden keeps shaping the living. Close to the Bodies motif, but where bodies are freshly dead, skeletons are old secrets that have been rattling around for years.
A skeleton is what's left when everything else has rotted away, so it stands for the parts of a past you can't get rid of no matter how long ago they were buried. The recurring twist is giving them agency, letting the old secrets move and scheme on their own, which makes the past feel less like memory and more like something actively working against the present.
Appears in 3 songs
“The skeletons in both our closets plotted against us”
Skeletons as concealed pasts taking on agency, the cliché of closet skeletons literalised and animated, buried secrets turned conspiratorial characters. Both parties carry equal concealment; the skeletons of their separate pasts work against the relationship's future.
“And the skeletons in both our closets Plotted hard to fuck this up”
The skeletons represent both characters' past indiscretions, lies, and the ways they've cheated others, the accumulated history of deception that now threatens to undermine a genuine relationship.
“I'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones”
Bones represent the physical remains of the dead, what is left after the spirit has departed. The image places the meeting between the lovers at the site of death, in the grave where only bones remain.
“Now he sits on his throne in his palace of bones”
The remains of what he took are the building material. Where the skeletons elsewhere in the catalogue are hidden away in closets, these are load-bearing, arranged into a residence and sat on in full view.