Dress

“Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo”

The lover's effect figured as a tattoo, a mark made on the speaker's body that stays. 'Made your mark on me' makes the marking deliberate and mutual rather than something simply received, and the gold gives it warmth and worth. The mark is wanted, and still permanent.

“Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo”

Calling the mark a golden tattoo makes it precious as well as permanent, the gold raising a lover's lasting imprint into something treasured.

“Carve your name into my bedpost, 'cause I don't want you like a best friend”

The bedpost as the surface for an act of name-carving, the kind of marking schoolyard lovers leave on tree bark transposed onto the most intimate piece of bedroom furniture. The speaker is naming what she wants the partner to do with the relationship: to leave a mark that cannot be undone on the place she sleeps. The bedpost becomes the figure of permanence the song is asking for.

“I'm spilling wine in the bathtub, you kiss my face and we're both drunk”

Wine spilled in the bathtub belongs to the song's intimate domestic suite, the kiss, the drunkenness, the dress. The drink does not declare the relationship in public; it remains in private, spilled in the most domestic of settings, and the verb (spilling) names the loosening rather than the consumption.

“Only bought this dress so you could take it off”

The dress as pure desire: bought to be taken off, the garment named only for the undressing, the most directly sexual use of clothing in the catalogue.