Aug 9, 2025
i love the line "in your basement i grow cold, thinking back to what i was always told: 'don't talk to strangers or you might fall in love'" by ethel cain because it almost feels like an offhanded line about the dangers of putting too much trust in people you don't know, but if you think about it just a layer deeper, the usual advice for kids is to not talk to strangers because they could be dangerous, so the underlying meaning is less about the lover and more about how ethel was not raised by parents who taught her security or how to protect herself (and this ties into the line at the end "and i would never blame you for loving me the way that you did")
