From the album Golden Age
This is a song about someone who thinks asking permission to be hurt means she's in control, when really she's negotiating the terms of her own captivity. She frames numbness as healing because she's convinced herself that if pain stops registering, she's finally free.
Trying on each dress I bought for you / Do I look pretty / When I ask you to hit me?
The dresses aren't for her. She's staging desirability as a performance someone else directs, then immediately pivots to asking if she looks good while requesting violence. She treats both as the same audition.
Hands like barbed wire / Wrapped around my throat, making me cry like I told you I wanted in the car
She frames the choking as something she requested, turning consent into proof she's choosing this. But barbed wire doesn't let go once it's around your throat. The image contradicts the agency she's claiming.
Sunday morning, everything hurts except for you / Sunday morning, nothing hurts, not even you
Part I says you're the relief. Part II says you don't even hurt anymore. That progression from selective pain to total numbness sounds like recovery, but it's actually dissociation winning. She's mistaking emotional shutdown for freedom.
When I go home at night I think about the ways that I can get out / Of the hold you've got me in
She's imagining escape while still addressing him directly, still trapped in the second person. Even the fantasy of leaving can't break the conversational frame. She might be rehearsing departure, or she might just be thinking about it as a thought experiment she'll never act on.
You've still got time, waiting on the other side / You'll still be alright, if you just make it to the other side
The pronouns collapse here. 'You' becomes both him and herself, or maybe just herself talking to herself. The other side isn't defined. It could mean leaving him, surviving the year, or just making it to Monday. The vagueness makes the reassurance feel hollow.
The song ends with her claiming nothing hurts anymore, like she's finally free. But she's still in the same room, still in second person, still addressing the person who's holding her. She's mistaking numbness for survival.