

As the lyrics suggest—and Courtney Love has flat out stated—the Nirvana classic “Heart-Shaped Box” is about singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain being enthralled by Love’s vagina at the beginning of their star-crossed relationship. If one stands back and squints, the female reproductive organs are shaped like a heart, and “box” is common parlance for the area a child I once babysat for also nicknamed her “tater.” But upon giving a listen to Amber Mark’s beautiful cover of the song this morning, I realized that in addition to being a dithyramb on those first weeks of a relationship during which it is almost impossible to stop fucking, the song is also about the relationship dynamics of a Pisces and Cancer in love.
The portion of the song dedicated to the tater has been readily apparent to me for quite some time, what with the “umbilical noose” hanging out of the heart-shaped box like a ladder and all, but the lyric “I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black,” has always perplexed me. Was there some sort of malignancy up there? A blight hidden inside the tater? Perhaps the “cancer” was a metaphor for the ways that the darkest parts of our personalities can intrude on relationships, souring the nonstop fucking part.