From the album Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You
This is what happens when you know the person you need will not save you, so you skip straight to fantasizing about your own death. The song splits into two voices: the one begging someone to be gentle, and the one who already knows gentleness won't fix anything. By the end, she's not asking to be saved. She's asking to be taken home, which might mean the same thing as giving up.
Can you hear them? / The trains
Trains as a suicide image before any context arrives. She's already decided where this is going. The question is not rhetorical. She wants to know if you hear them too, if you understand what she's saying without saying it.
Do you swing from your neck / With the hope someone cares?
This flips the usual logic of a cry for help. She's asking if he fantasizes about his own death for attention, which means she's already doing it without that hope. Her version is lonelier.
I still dream of violence / Angry at the waiting game
Violence here is not what someone does to you. It's what you imagine doing to yourself because dying passively takes too long. The anger is not at a person. It's at time itself for moving slow.
You came around here just to watch me writhe / Am I what you think about all late at night?
She catches him enjoying her suffering, or at least suspects it. The question is accusatory but also pathetically hopeful. Maybe being someone's dark fantasy is better than being nobody's anything.
I'm gonna regret this / Forever
Regret what? Asking for help, needing someone, or whatever she's about to do that the song won't name. The repetition of "forever" turns the word into white noise. Forever stops meaning anything when you can't imagine tomorrow.
The song ends on "forever," repeated until it stops sounding like a promise and starts sounding like a threat. Ethel Cain writes like someone who knows exactly how bad it can get and has stopped pretending it won't. This is what Grouper would sound like if she sang about wanting to die instead of just sounding like it.