Songfacts®:

• This song was written by Emily Saliers, who along with Amy Ray, makes up the Indigo Girls. Says Saliers: "That's a song that's about someone who haunts you forever. It uses archetypal images, like Achilles Heel, and the Mississippi River and all of its grandeur, but starts really, really small. And that's the way a love can begin, so small, like a little pinprick, and then the next thing you know, you're flooded with emotion and attachment. It's obviously about a separation between two people and the person who's speaking in the song is absolutely still in love with the one that she lost, and it seems like everything reminds her of that person. It's a very sad song - there's no relief to it, really. It's a person who's drowning in loss, and haunted by either the memory or the knowledge that the person's still out there in the world somewhere, but they're not together. Very emotional song."
• Saliers says that this was not based on a specific person: "That was just drawing from, well, personal experiences, but then what other people have gone through and talking to people, or films, or books, or whatever it is. It wasn't just written about one person, but I just have an empathy for heartache, I think, and I'm able to get to heartache and what it feels like and why it happens, for whatever reason. I think that's why I write a lot of songs about it." (Check out our interview with Emily Saliers. The official Indigo Girls website is indigogirls.com.)