No, it’s not about the video game. “Fortnight,” the first single from Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” is a duet with Post Malone.

Before we delve into the lyrics, let’s get some temporal vocabulary: “Fortnight” means a two-week span. How much damage can two weeks do? According to this song, a lot.

The lyrics describe a torrid, short-lived and forbidden love affair that, as she says, has dramatic effects: “I love you and it’s ruining my life.” This line was already teased in an Apple Music playlist ahead of the album and in imagery, as if to say, “It’s Important.”

Revisit our live coverage of the release of “The Tortured Poets Department.”

The narrator is, to put it bluntly, not well. She sings, “I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me.” She was a “functioning alcoholic ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” suggesting that her substance use was a cry for help and attempt for someone to “notice” her.

How did she get here? The song appears to be about two neighbors married to other people. Now that the affair is over, they have returned to their old lives. This is not sitting well with our narrator.

“Now you’re in my backyard, turned into good neighbors / Your wife waters flowers. I wanna kill her,” she sings.

Domestic bliss is nowhere to be found in this nuclear family entanglement, as she sings, “My husband is cheating. I wanna kill him.”

There is no cure for heartbreak, according to this song, though she tried: “I took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary.”

The song ends the narrator being abandoned. The the man going to Florida in a car he won; he got the getaway car, she didn’t. Florida becomes a place of escape in this song and the song “Florida!!!” which Swift co-wrote with Florence Welch.

In that song, she sings of saving up for a time share in Destin, as if Florida is a goal and a place of future expectation: “Florida, is one hell of a drug / Florida, can I use you up?” A cheating husband who disappears also figures into the song.

It’s worth noting that, during a concert in Florida, Swift first acknowledged her breakup with Alwyn, saying, “We have a lot to catch up on.”

On April 19, Swift released the music video for “Fortnight,” where she and Malone appear to play lovers in an experimental mental institution.

In two surprise cameos, Swift and Malone are involved in some kind of testing process with actors Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, both of whom starred in the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society,” which people have been mixing up with Swift’s new album.

After releasing the video, Swift shared a look at the writing and filming process in a post on X.

“When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music.  Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it,” she wrote.

Read the lyrics to ‘Fortnight’
I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me

I was a functioning alcoholic ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic

All of this to say I hope you’re OK, but you’re the reason

And no one here’s to blame but what about your quiet treason

And for a fortnight there we were

Forever running to you

Sometimes ask about the weather

Now you’re in my backyard, turned into good neighbors

Your wife waters flowers. I wanna kill her.

All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February

I took the miracle move on drug, the effects were temporary

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And I love you, it’s ruining my life (I love you, it’s ruining my life)

I touched you for only a fortnight (I touched you)

But I touched you

And for a fortnight there we were, forever running to you

Sometimes ask about the weather

Now you’re in my backyard turned into good neighbors

Your wife waters flowers. I wanna kill her.

And for a fortnight, there we were together

Running to you, sometimes come and turn my sweater

And now you’re at the mailbox, turned into good neighbors

My husband is cheating. I wanna kill him.

And I love you, it’s ruining my life (I love you, it’s ruining my life)

I touched you for only a fortnight (I touched you)

But I touched you

And I love you

It’s ruining my life (I love you, it’s ruining my life)

I touched you for only a fortnight (I touched you)

But I touched you

I’m calling you, but you won’t be called?

Another fortnight lost in America

Going to Florida by the car you won

But it won’t start up till you touch, touch, touch me