Invisible Strings - 5. "A Shared Nocturne" by Tyler Knott Gregson

 "A Shared Nocturne" by Tyler Knott Gregson

I didn't have any connections jumping out at me until the last line of the poem - "Stay." And then it all clicked. "All You Had to Do Was Stay" seemed to be an immediate fit. The repetition of "stay" throughout the song, and then the appearance of "stay" at the end of the poem.

After seeing the last line, the poem's first line, "Send them backwards" seemed to click into place with the song. In the song, the narrator is looking back on a relationship and telling their partner that they should have known what they had when they had it. In the poem (perhaps narrated by the partner of the narrator in the song), the narrator wants to take everything back and have their partner "whisper / Stay."

I also thought that "If This Was a Movie" could be a possibility because of the "Come back, come back, come back to me" lines, and I think that does work, in a way, because in the poem the narrator is looking backward, rewinding in a way. But in the song, the role is flipped, and the narrator is the one that wanted the partner to stay.

So, I'm going to stick with my original gut feeling on this one because I think it's truly the poem's narrator responding to the narrator in the song.