The steam coils,
ghostly fingers tracing
the unsayable—
hot whispers pressed against glass.
A light flickers overhead,
waving shadows like old lovers,
dancing apart in indecisive rhythms.
Under amber, beneath dusky beams,
guitars moan low, like stories
too heavy to speak aloud,
their echoes clinging to the grain of oak tables—
rough as forgotten dreams.
The air thrums—
full of taste,
the tang of secrets breaking like foam
at the edge of someone's lips.
The microphone/stage is a beacon
held by trembling hands,
each breath a tempest
reaching into your skin,
pushing against the forgotten dust
of your ribcage.
Words are fractured glass,
held to candlelight,
reflecting slivers of every life not lived.
They melt on the tongue like dark chocolate,
leave bitterness behind—
that flavor of someone else's pain
caught, momentarily, in the back of your throat.
Every verse unbuttons the darkness a little further,
leaves it gaping,
so we can step inside.
Blues chords unwind,
lazy serpents,
finding the cracks between heartbeats,
filling spaces too small to name.
The creak of wood beneath a shifting weight,
the brush of fabric against skin—
a sigh, a click, the clink of a half-empty mug.
This is how loneliness smells,
half blues, half brews—
how it sinks in, warm and unrelenting,
how it wraps itself in the undulating lines of jazz
and a voice that pulls tears from the moon.
Words brew, rise, and rest
Dissolve,
blurring into each other's echoes,
becoming soft at the edges,
our souls a trembling foam
floating above,
drifting,
then gone.
