Last Kiss (TV)
Hidden message
Forever and always
Encoded in the album’s liner notes.
“Because I love your handshake meeting me father”
Handshake-meeting-father register, the formal-occasion hand-gesture rendered as the speaker's memory of his social ease, the family-introduction moment surviving in the body as a remembered grip.
“I love how you walk with your hands in your pocket”
Hands-in-pockets register, the partner's walking-posture remembered as one of the small habitual details the speaker catalogues, the pocketed hand as the casual mark of the person she has lost.
“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.
“And I hope the sun shines, and it's a beautiful day”
Daylight as the generous wish sent after a lost love. Hoping the sun shines on him, the speaker offers warmth as the kind thing she can still want for the person she has had to let go.
“Fresh on the pavement, I ran off the plane”
Fresh off the pavement as the moment the partner stepped out of the rain to greet the speaker. The line attaches the meeting to the wet pavement, the street has just released him to her, with the freshness doing the work of marking the moment as still memorable years later.
“I do recall now the smell of the rain Fresh on the pavement, I ran off the plane”
Rain returns as sensory memory, recalled by scent. The smell off wet pavement is the detail the speaker keeps replaying, the rain preserved as the texture of a love now past.
I hope it's...
“I hope it's nice where you are”
“I hope it's shitty in The Black Dog” — The Black Dog
Angela sets Last Kiss's I hope it's nice where you are, written in Taylor's late teens, against The Black Dog's I hope it's shitty written years later, reading the reversed wish as a measure of how the writer has aged.