Songfacts®:

• "Afterglow" finds Taylor Swift apologizing to her beau after overreacting to an incident. The songstress admits their fight was caused by her tendency to assume the worst.
  
  I blew things out of proportion, now you're blue
  Put you in jail for something you didn't do
  
  Taylor desires to keep the fire going in the romance and asks her lover to forgive her for the outburst.
  
  I don't wanna lose, I don't wanna lose this with you
  I need to say, hey, it's all me, just don't go
  Meet me in the afterglow
  
  The singer wants a reconciliation so their relationship can shine again.
• Swift teased the song title in the music video for "Lover" during a scene when a hand plays the words "After" and "Glow," on a scrabble board. The board is titled "King of Hearts," a nod to her Reputation track "King Of My Heart, which is about her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. Swift is likely indicating that the two songs are about the same person.
• Swift has apologized before in a song for the way she mistreated a lover. Her Speak Now track "Back To December" finds her saying sorry to a former boyfriend for the way she messed up their relationship.
• An "afterglow" is a radiance in the sky after the sun has set. Other artists that have used the post-sunset glow as a metaphor in a song include INXS, Black Country Communion, Wilkinson, Small Faces, Chvrches and Young Guns.
• Taylor Swift co-wrote and co-produced "Afterglow" with Louis Bell and Frank Dukes. The three also wrote together the Lover tracks "I Forgot That You Existed" and "It's Nice to Have a Friend."