#theme:

Why did you paint the walls?

Why did you clean the floor?

Why did you plaster over

The hole I punched in the door? (4)

This is where we used to live

Why did you keep the mousetrap?

Why did you keep the dish rack? (5)

These things used to be mine

I guess they still are, I want them back (6)

Broke into the old apartment

Forty-two steps from the street (7)

Crooked landing, crooked landlord

Narrow lane way filled with crooks

This is where we used to live

Why did they pave the lawn?

Why did they change the lock? (4)

Why did I have to break it (8)

I only came here to talk

This is where we used to live

How is the neighbor downstairs?

How is her temper this year?

I turned up your TV

And stomped on the floor just for fun (9)

I know we don't live here anymore

We bought an old house on the Danforth

She loves me and her body keeps me warm

And I'm happy here (10)

This is where we used to live

Broke into the old apartment

Tore the phone out of the wall (11)

Only memories, fading memories

Blending into dull tableaux

I want them back (12)

I want them back (this is where we used to live)

I want them back (this is where we used to live)

I want them back (this is where we used to live)

I want them back"

Immediately, in two words, we are told that he is not supposed to be in this place. He is not welcome. He does not belong here, and yet he has forced himself onto the premesis.

But he used to belong here. This was his home. By themselves, these two lines define the entire song. The present tense is important. This is not the story of that time he broke in, he is there right now.

The description given is (obviously) entirely very negative, he does not have a nice thing to say about this apartment, and he will not for the entire song.

These things he is complaining about are not only normal, but healthy changes. Each question could reasonably be rephrased as "why are things better now? Why is the damage gone?"

He then does an immediate backpedal, and begins to ask why some things are still the same. A mousetrap and a dish rack are both unpleasant things. One is used to kill pests, and the other is used for a pretty universally disliked chore (without a dishwasher I might add).

He feels an ownership of these unpleasant things though, even though they are no longer necessary in his life (or he would have brought them with him). These are his problems, and he doesn't want to share them with strange people.

This line implies a very intimate level of familiarity. He lived in this place for a terribly long time to still remember such a trivial detail.

He fails to understand why he is no longer welcome, although he has chosen to move away.

In this stanza he remembers a lengthy feud he had with an angry neighbor. However, he remembers it in a positive light (How is she? That was fun for me). Notably, this is as close as he gets to saying something positive about the old apartment.

In this one, we learn that things are officially better now. He has upgraded from an apartment to a house, he owns it, he shares it with a lover. But. Right now, he has chosen to be here instead.

This is a curiously specific thing to do. He has voluntarily and violently made it impossible for people outside to contact the apartment, unless he is willing to open the door and go out or let them in.

All of this because of old memories he refuses to let go.