Velvet Virgil

**Velvet Vigil**

 

 

(Verse 1)

 

You fold the night into your lap like prayer, like error, like a bruise

 

Candles cough their lipstick off and leave the windows with old news

 

We parade our tiny funerals in the kitchen, under cheap chandeliers

 

You tie my name to your sleeve like paper boats and whispered fears

 

 

(Pre-Chorus)

 

Say you’ll keep me in the pocket of your coat where secrets sleep

 

Promise me the weather won’t unlearn the way you keep

 

 

(Chorus)

 

Hold me in your velvet vigil, press my ribs like holy things

 

Kiss the static from my temple, stitch my silence to your wings

 

If love is some slow arson, light me gently, don’t be cruel

 

Swear you’ll be the crooked gospel that keeps worshiping our fools

 

 

(Verse 2)

 

We trade our better angels for the cigarette ash of the dawn

 

You laugh as if the world is a stage and we’re the chorus, slightly wrong

 

Your shadow teaches mine new sins — how to bow and not to break

 

We wrap our throats in ribbon and call it brave, call it fate

 

 

(Pre-Chorus)

 

You keep a photograph that’s folded to the shape of what we lied

 

You say, “I’ll hold you after midnight,” like a threat I can’t deny

 

 

(Chorus)

 

Hold me in your velvet vigil, press my ribs like holy things

 

Kiss the static from my temple, stitch my silence to your wings

 

If love is some slow arson, light me gently, don’t be cruel

 

Swear you’ll be the crooked gospel that keeps worshiping our fools

 

 

(Bridge — spoken, then building)

 

We were students of the hush, learned how to pray in the wrong keys

 

You taught me how to love with one hand, keep the other on the blade

 

We’ll carve our promises on the backs of chairs and let the rain baptized

 

The confessions that we barter like coins in some abandoned arcade

 

 

(Breakdown — shouted)

 

Stay — don’t let the gutters eat the light we stole

 

Stay — burn our names on the underside of every phone booth soul

 

Stay — stay the comet that refuses to forget the earth

 

Stay — if we have to die, let it be loud and messy, let it be worth

 

 

(Chorus — bigger, doubled)

 

Hold me in your velvet vigil, press my ribs like holy things

 

Kiss the static from my temple, stitch my silence to your wings

 

If love is some slow arson, light me gently, don’t be cruel

 

Swear you’ll be the crooked gospel that keeps worshiping our fools

 

 

(Outro — quiet, urgent)

 

When the church lights fold their palms and the crowd goes cheap and gray

 

Keep the heartbeat in your pocket like contraband, like payday

 

Hold me in the velvet vigil — and if the world forgets our names

 

Let the echo be enough: two riddles wrapped in flame.