willow
“I'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night”
The speaker as the medium the partner arrived through. Sea rather than river because of the ship, a vessel that requires depth, openness, the crossing that costs distance. The image uses its own openness to argue the speaker's availability without naming it.
“Lost in your current like a priceless wine”
The partner as oceanic flow that carries the speaker. The simile pairs the current with something valuable and unrecoverable, and the doubled image holds both: a body of water that runs in one direction, and something worth keeping that's getting carried in it.
“You know that my train could take you home”
Full analytical context awaits the willow episode extraction.
“I'm begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, that's my man”
Taking register, the begged-for hand-take placed alongside the wrecked plans as the matched pair of surrenders; the speaker frames the hand-take as the small precondition for the larger relinquishment of the future.
the water and the ship, opening and closing the album
“I'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night”
“I'm on waves, out being tossed ... Guess I'm feeling unmoored” — evermore
A community reader hears evermore answer willow across the length of the album: willow opens as the water meeting the ship that rolls in, evermore closes unmoored and tossed on the same waves. The album that began with the speaker as water welcoming a vessel ends with her cast loose on it - the imagery bookending evermore, with the final song's recovery measured against the opening song's arrival.