Next up on the Folklore Chronicles tour is my piece for the track “seven.” See my last post for “mirrorball” here.
I still picture you
you invited me to your house because we liked playing together
on the playground at school but my parents said no.why? she lives just around the corner i can see her house from
my windowwe know but we’re not sure it’s safe
she’s a nice girl and if her house isn’t safe
we should save her, shouldn’t we?it’s complicated and you’re too young to understand
i told you sorry no I’m not allowed to come over. you never
asked again and we barely played at school again.I still wonder if you ever escaped that haunted house. Did you
pack your bags and leave forever?
This song is my absolute favorite on the entire album. It makes me think of running around in my overalls without a care in the world. It brings to mind falling off the monkey bars and how, when you’re a kid, every friend becomes your best friend in that moment.
It also evokes a nostalgia for innocence. As children, we only want to play with our friends we made in school. We don’t think about anything else going on around us, but our parents see it. We don’t notice how parents behave, or how run-down a house looks, or the glassy stare in someone’s eyes.
That’s the story that Taylor Swift’s “seven” tells, of a young girl running wild, playing pretend, never once thinking about danger, consequences, or proper etiquette. And looking back on that innocence with a mature perspective, it makes you want to go back to a time when you didn’t see so much.
I still remember her name, the girl I wrote about in the poem. I remember the house she lived in with her family, whom I never met. Every time I pass by that house, now home to a new family with new memories and new experiences, I always think of the two little girls who met in school and just wanted to play. And if it had been up to me, I would have tried to save her.
I sometimes wonder where she ended up. I wonder where so many of those kindergarten friends ended up. Who did they become? Do they have families of their own now? Did they escape whatever nightmares they may have been living that I never knew about? Do they ever wonder the same things about me? Nostalgia truly is a bittersweet feeling.
Thanks for following along! Comment and let me know what you think.