This is a song about realizing someone else has moved into the space where you used to be. The narrator describes a house full of abandoned objects—pool, barbecue, things—but by the second verse, those objects belong to 'him,' a stranger who now occupies the domestic life the narrator thought was theirs. The shaking at the end isn't from cold water. It's from waking up alone in a place that no longer recognizes you.
No diving pool for barbecue / No one swims / No one barbecues
The repetition of 'no one' turns these objects into evidence of absence before we know what's missing. The pool and barbecue are domestic props that require people to activate them, and the song opens by showing us they've been deactivated. Lenderman's thing about showing facts instead of telling how to feel lands here—he gives you the empty pool and lets you figure out what died.
But I love and I love you / I love and I love you / And I feel we know him / These are his things
The present tense love declaration collapses the second 'him' shows up. That pronoun arrives without introduction, as if the speaker has been thinking about him for so long they forgot the listener doesn't know who that is. The 'we' pretends there's still a couple here, but 'his things' names the replacement. This is someone trying to maintain a shared reality that's already dissolved.
You were sleeping / With me then / I woke up / Shaking, shaking
The past tense appears for the first time, and it's devastating. Everything before this was narrated like it's still happening, but 'were sleeping' admits the togetherness is retrospective. The double 'shaking' refuses to resolve into an explanation—cold, fear, grief, all of it at once. The narrator doesn't understand why they're shaking because naming the reason would mean admitting the person is gone.
No one swims / No one barbecues / These are his things / These are his words
The song moves from 'no one' to 'him' without transition, as if the absence created a vacuum someone else filled. By the time we get to 'his words,' it's not just physical objects anymore—language itself belongs to the stranger now. The narrator is describing a haunting but doesn't seem to know it yet.
This might be about a breakup, or it might be about losing someone to someone else, or it might be about the narrator's inability to tell the difference. Either way, the house is full of objects that used to mean togetherness and now mean abandonment. Lenderman doesn't explain who 'him' is because the song is about the moment you realize you've been replaced before you were ready to admit the relationship was over.