Lyric

Soft laugh from the back room

Coat on a crooked chair

Candle wax running in rivers

Half-melted menu there

Bartender polishing silver

Moving at an easy pace

A couple playing cards by the jukebox

Trying not to lose their place

This is the velvet hour

Slow hands on a borrowed time

Trouble leaves by the side door

Doesn’t even cross my mind

Air tastes like cinnamon stories

Low voices draw their lines

Here in the velvet hour

I unpack my tangled mind

Steam rising up from my teacup

Spirals like a lazy spell

Coasters curled at the edges

Old logo you can barely tell

Coat hooks lean with umbrellas

Dripping from the last light rain

A stranger folds a paper napkin

Into some paper plane

This is the velvet hour

Slow hands on a borrowed time

Old wounds loosen their laces

Slip off

Leaving me behind

Air tastes like cinnamon stories

Low voices draw their lines

Here in the velvet hour

I unwind my restless mind

Mirror behind the bottles

Holds faces from who knows when

Someone draws a tiny heart

Then wipes it away again

A server counts her tips in whispers

Stacks them into careful piles

Band flyer on the corkboard

Faded dates and crooked smiles

Living in a velvet hour

Soft bend where the day resigns

Every sigh feels lighter

Every thought can re-align

Air tastes like cinnamon stories

Low voices draw their lines

Deep in the velvet hour

I can hear my quiet mind

Outside

Traffic breathes and fades

Inside

Time just folds

All the sharp words I carried in

Turn to stories I outgrow

I’m not looking for answers

Just a place to feel untied

Here

The world gets softer

On the inside of my mind

A scarf sleeps on the barstool

Forgotten by some earlier soul

Chessboard waiting for partners

Kings tilted from control

Bartender flips the open sign

To a promise of “later on”

I trace the ring on the table

Then rise

Already calm

Leaving the velvet hour

Footsteps in an easy line

Heartbeat walks at my shoulder

Breathing in a gentler time

Air keeps those cinnamon stories

Carried as the doors unwind

From that velvet hour

I take home a settled mind