Grieving for the Living: Destruction and Rebirth in “ivy”

Sometimes real love holds you tight enough to make it worth the risk.

The theme of secret, forbidden love has long been a part of Taylor Swift’s discography, perhaps most famously in “Love Story,” the first single off of Fearless. Although her storytelling certainly evolved between 2008 and the 2020 release of evermore, this motif lies at the heart of “ivy,” a song about a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage while in love with someone else. This story and the song do not gender the muse, which, along with the specific imagery and the stark contrast between the muse and the husband, leaves it open to queer interpretation—the lyrics emphasize the gravity of the risk and repercussions of this relationship. In addition, Swift has named “ivy” an example of her “Quill” songwriting: “If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the Quill genre.” Before Swift even made this speech mentioning Dickinson, the song was featured in Dickinson to supplement a sex scene between Emily and Sue, whose story matches the narrative of the song, adding to its sapphic undertones.

High Infidelity

The first verse introduces the speaker and the muse: “How’s one to know? / I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones / In a faith-forgotten land.” The opening question suggests that this relationship took the speaker by surprise, but it can also be understood as her sarcastically feigning innocence about her infidelity. Throughout this song, Swift’s imagery is both precise and abstract, and the phrase “where the spirit meets the bones” is no exception. While it might conjure the image of a clandestine graveyard, it could also denote where one’s soul and body become one, forming a complete person. The parallelism suggests, in turn, that the speaker and the “you” figure, the song’s muse, come together in this same way to complement each other. It is here that the speaker feels like a whole person and is in touch with her emotions. This “faith-forgotten land” is not only a wordplay on the speaker being unfaithful to her husband, but also an indication that, together, she and her muse have abandoned faith entirely. The pursuit of love in the place of or as a religion, which can be a queer solution to being shunned in the name of religion, recurs throughout this song and in much of Swift’s discography at large.¹

Swift continues with descriptions holding both literal and figurative significance: “In from the snow / Your touch brought forth an incandescent glow / Tarnished but so grand.” Although these lyrics narrate going inside for warmth, they also demonstrate that the speaker’s marriage is cold and devoid of feeling, whereas this forbidden relationship is warm. An “incandescent glow” is light that is emitted as a result of the generation of heat, so the muse’s “touch” starts a fire between them—another metaphor that runs through this song. The word “[t]arnished” then suggests the opposite of a “glow,” that the speaker’s marriage has cast a shadow on their love, but it remains “grand” nevertheless.

The pre-chorus provides the first indication of the husband’s existence: “And the old widow goes to the stone every day / But I don’t, I just sit here and wait / Grieving for the living.” The speaker is jealous of the widow visiting her deceased spouse’s grave because she views her as free from marriage. The speaker’s only option is to “sit here and wait” since she can’t do anything about the marriage she is trapped in; the only way she feels she can escape it is through her husband’s death. Even though he’s still alive, she is “[g]rieving” his loss in anticipation of his death. She also grieves the very fact that he is “living” and that this means she is stuck in this situation.

Through the Cracks

The speaker begins the chorus with another denouncement of faith: “Oh, goddamn / My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand / Taking mine, but it’s been promised to another.” Her “pain” might seem overwhelming, but with her lover it becomes small enough to fit in and be eased by their hands. The muse’s hand is “freezing,” but we know from the first verse that when they touch it creates an “incandescent glow,” which implies that they both need each other. The speaker’s “hand,” however, is “promised” to her husband in marriage; as a result, her “pain” has also been promised to him.

The “ivy” image describes the impact of the affair: “I can’t / Stop you putting roots in my dreamland / My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I’m covered in you.” By saying she can’t stop the muse, the speaker renounces responsibility for her infidelity, rendering herself the more passive agent. The phrase “putting roots in my dreamland” suggests planting something strong and permanent in an imaginary place, so the relationship is real but is hindered by the marriage and thus partially confined to fantasy.² The speaker compares her marriage to a “house of stone,” which is largely impenetrable, but ivy is an exception: it can grow on such surfaces, infiltrating her life. The metaphor also contrasts the muse with the husband—whereas ivy is alive, stone is not. The speaker is “covered” in ivy because the muse has made their way into her heart and mind such that their love is inevitable. Furthermore, although it can be beautiful, ivy is sometimes considered a weed or undesirable plant growing where it shouldn’t and killing things in its wake. For the speaker’s unhappy marriage, that would be a positive outcome, but it’s still a precarious situation for all involved. For better or for worse, the speaker and the muse are intertwined in a transformative love.

Magnificently Cursed

In the second verse, the speaker further explores the forbidden aspect of the relationship: “I wish to know / The fatal flaw that makes you long to be / Magnificently cursed.” She envies the muse’s comfort with the situation, since she is struggling with the relationship and what it means for them. The speaker views this longing as a “fatal flaw” that could kill them but they’ll pursue anyway. The word “cursed” marks connections to “The Prophecy” and “Dear Reader,” and again ties into the theme of religious conflict or trauma.³ Although the husband is the source of the speaker’s fear, her love begins to outweigh this feeling: “He’s in the room / Your opal eyes are all I wish to see / He wants what’s only yours.” In these lyrics, the speaker cheekily alludes to the fact that the affair is happening under her husband’s nose. She asserts that he wants her to love him, but those feelings are reserved exclusively for the muse. The penultimate line here has some connections to “Daylight” and Swift’s use of light and color in her depictions of love. On the surface, the lyric is similar to “I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you,” where Swift describes real love as “daylight.” Notably, opals come in many different colors and often contain multiple, which could be a queer reference to the rainbow spectrum.⁴ Opals were also once believed to grant invisibility, which would certainly help with their efforts to keep this illicit love hidden.

After a repetition of the chorus, Swift enters the first bridge (yes, this song has two bridges and a third verse): “Clover blooms in the fields / Spring breaks loose, the time is near / What would he do if he found us out?” These fragmented images reflect the fact that new things are growing in the relationship and in nature—spring represents rebirth and new life. The fact that it “breaks loose” renders it a symbol of the love between the speaker and the muse, as “the time is near” for them to break free from the marriage. This lyric is immediately followed by the speaker’s fear of the truth being exposed, and this pattern occurs again: “Crescent moon, coast is clear / Spring breaks loose, but so does fear / He’s gonna burn this house to the ground.” The “[c]rescent moon” is another symbol of renewal, but it is also the phase of the moon that gives off the least light, allowing the lovers to be concealed by the darkness: that’s why the “coast is clear.”⁵ This time, however, she articulates the fact that her excitement is accompanied by “fear” that her husband will “burn this house to the ground.” Here, fire is used again but in a more destructive context to describe the husband’s potentially violent reaction to discovering the truth. Then again, the “house” represents the unhappy marriage, so perhaps she wants him to burn it down—even if they get hurt, she’ll walk away free.⁶

Burnin’ It Down

The speaker starts the third verse by bringing back the song’s first line: “How’s one to know? / I’d live and die for moments that we stole / On begged and borrowed time.” To “live and die” for something sums up the speaker’s predicament; the affair is motivating her to keep going but also contains an inherent danger. Their stolen “moments” call back to the “stolen stares” in “illicit affairs,” as this is all they can afford. The term “borrowed time” indicates that they are postponing the inevitable while keeping the relationship secret, and the addition of “begged” demonstrates their desperation. At this point, the speaker has accepted her fear and believes that their love is worth the risk: “So tell me to run / Or dare to sit and watch what we’ll become / And drink my husband’s wine.” With her newfound confidence, she challenges her lover to make up their mind once and for all and navigate their uncertain future together. This bravery in defiance will allow them to “become” something as one. The “drink my husband’s wine” line is another example of the speaker’s cockiness and her taking advantage of the fact that this has all happened without the husband knowing. His obliviousness despite the muse’s presence in his life also hints at this being a queer relationship—the husband might be less suspicious of his wife spending so much time with a woman than with another man.

The second bridge brings back the fire image once again: “So yeah, it’s a fire / It’s a goddamn blaze in the dark / And you started it.” This destructive “blaze in the dark” is necessary in order to conjure some light in the darkness of the speaker’s marriage. The phrase “you started it” is usually used to assign blame, but this context puts a positive spin on it. In fact, this whole metaphor is an amplified version of the “incandescent glow” from the first verse. Nevertheless, the speaker acknowledges the difficulty of the situation: “So yeah, it’s a war / It’s the goddamn fight of my life / And you started it.” Even though this “war” is against the husband, the muse is the one who “started it” by prompting the speaker to take action in pursuing real love instead. It being the “fight of [her] life” allocates additional significance to the relationship, which also works with the speaker longing for the freedom to express a sapphic identity. Whatever she is fighting for, it will define her long after her husband is out of the picture. The end of the song assures the listener that the speaker will not have to endure this journey alone, as Swift returns to the second half of the chorus: the ivy continues to grow and bring the two lovers closer, allowing the speaker to find strength in their subversive union.

1. Some examples include "False God," "Holy Ground," "Cornelia Street," and "Guilty as Sin?"

2. This makes me think of the imaginary secret gardens in "I Hate It Here" (read my analysis)!

3. "I got cursed like Eve got bitten" and "desperate prayers of a cursed man."

4. She's literally talking about eyes: "You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else."

5. "I hate it here so I will go to lunar valleys in my mind": both songs use the moon as a source of concealment and sanctuary.

6. A fun parallel to burning down the Lover house on tour.