Ghost in the Chapel

Driving back to the one-room chapel where you first believed something, and finding the air doesn’t move the way it used to. About pressing your palm to a wall half-expecting it to be warm, not trusting your own mouth to say the name — and listening to the silence to remember how.

Lyrics

There’s a one-room chapel past the county line
Where the weeds climb up the welcome sign
Every time I drive by that fence
Like we thought that wood meant permanence

Hum before the service start
One in the air, one hand on your heart
Dust in the light like it meant something
Like it was more than just a Sunday morning

I keep going back
To see what’s still there
Run my fingers through the splintered prayers
they still groan
Like they always have
But the air don’t move the way it did back then
There’s a shape in the silence I can’t quite tell
Just a ghost in the chapel

The piano’s missing half its teeth
Same as me at seventeen
There’s wax dried down the window frame
Like time tried hard but couldn’t stay

Front row, right side
Hoping yet distracted in the light
Waiting on that restless wind
That used to rattle through my ribs

Maybe nothing left the room
Maybe I did
Maybe it’s just for a younger man
Skin I outgrew and never fit

I press my palm against the wall
Half-expecting it to warm
But it’s only wood and weather now
Holding onto form

I don’t say Your name out loud
I don’t trust my mouth
I just listen for the silence
To remember how

Just a ghost in the chapel
Just a ghost in the chapel

Hear it, and own the record, on Bandcamp.

The First Liturgy