Tea That Tasted Like Forgiveness

Lyrics

[Intro]
The blueprints are still wet on the architect's table. But the wind is real up here. The city below us breathes in its sleep. Iron rebar grows through my hands like cold vines.

[Verse 1]
My long-dead friend Julian is sitting beside me. He didn't climb the unfinished floors. He was just… here. In his hand, a porcelain cup, no saucer. The steam smells like jasmine and rust. He offers it without a word. We don't talk about the past. The past is a different city, one that doesn't breathe.

[Chorus]
And the tea tastes like forgiveness. A quiet heat that settles behind my ribs. We're sitting on the roof of a building that hasn't been built yet. Watching the silver veins of the dream city pulse. Just sitting. Just sipping.

[Verse 2]
I look at my hands around the warm ceramic. I count seven fingers and I try again and count four. The cup doesn't fall. The reflection in the dark liquid is not the sky. It's the same roof, another us, looking back up. Their city is breathing faster than ours. Julian's reflection doesn't smile, but mine does.

[Chorus]
And the tea tastes like forgiveness. A quiet heat that settles behind my ribs. We're sitting on the roof of a building that hasn't been built yet. Watching the silver veins of the dream city pulse. Just sitting. Just sipping.

[Bridge]
He points a translucent finger at the cup. "Look closer," his voice is my own, but calmer. Inside the miniature city, inside a building that is not yet built, two figures sit on a roof. One of them is raising a cup to their lips. The steam forms a labyrinth with no exit, or only exits.

[Outro]
I drink the last of it. I drank the little city, and the roof, and the two of us. Julian is just a pattern in the girders now. The air is still. The taste of it is still on my tongue when I feel the jerk, the fall back into morning. The taste stays.