Echoes in the Velvet Smoke

The stage lights felt like remembering, each pulse a faded photograph of someone I'd almost forgotten. It wasn’t the applause that warmed me tonight – though it was certainly welcome, a hesitant bloom in the dimness. No, it was the scent of old cigarettes and something sweeter, like vanilla pressed into damp velvet.

He hadn’t spoken much during my set, just watched with those grey eyes that seemed to hold the weight of a thousand unspoken songs. A man who collected shadows, I suspected.

Afterward, he found me backstage, nursing a glass of amber liquid. ‘Your voice,’ he said, his voice rough like worn leather, 'carries a ghost.’

I didn’t correct him. Ghosts were familiar companions. They clung to the spaces between notes, to the silences after heartbreak.

He offered me another drink – rye, I believe – and then simply gestured towards a small table draped in scarlet fabric. A single candle flickered, casting long shadows that danced with my own.

The air thickened with unspoken things, with the possibility of warmth—not just from the whiskey, but something deeper, like a slow thaw in winter.

He didn’t ask about my past, not really. He listened instead as I hummed a fragment of an old tune, letting the melody weave through the smoky air. It was a song my grandmother used to sing, a lullaby meant to soothe a restless soul.

And for the first time in years, the echoes felt less like reminders of loss and more like…a beginning.

Editor: The Courier of Time