The Afterglow... The Afterglow (oh, oh) The house lights came up like a cold goodbye The ringing in my ears is my only lullaby I’m picking pink confetti out of the treads of my boots Tracing the ink on my skin where the stamp took root The parking lot is a ghost town of exhaust and brake lights Just a thousand strangers heading back to their regular lives My voice is a ghost, just a hoarse, jagged skin From screaming at the rafters, letting the holy air in The wind hits my face and the temperature drops The world starts moving, but for me, it just stops And I’m caught in the afterglow Where the air is still shaking from the front row From twenty-thousand voices down to just my own Driving through the silence on the long way home The stars are back in the sky, not on the stage But I’m still turning the leaf of the very last page In the afterglow My thumb is scrolling through a gallery of blurred-out gold Half-second clips of stories that’ll never get old You can’t hear the lyrics over the sound of us screaming But I know every word, even when I’m dreaming The glitter’s on the upholstery, the makeup’s on the sleeve It’s the only evidence of the magic I don't want to leave And I’m caught in the afterglow Where the air is still shaking from the front row From twenty-thousand voices down to just my own Driving through the silence on the long way home The stars are back in the sky, not on the stage But I’m still turning the leaf of the very last page In the afterglow I’m thinking of the girls who held the line beside me With the ribbons in their hair and the spirit of the mighty Total strangers five hours ago, now sisters in the grime Trading bracelets in the dark, just trying to freeze the time They’re all driving home now, staring through their own windshields Feeling the same heavy ache that this kind of devotion yields It’s a heavy kind of quiet, a hollow kind of blue To go from "we" back down to "me" and "you" The posters on my wall don’t breathe, they don’t move They can’t feel the bass, they don't know the groove But for two hours tonight, I wasn't alone I was part of the fire, I was part of the throne Yeah, I’m caught in the afterglow Where the air is still shaking from the front row From twenty-thousand voices down to just my own Driving through the silence on the long way home The stars are back in the sky, not on the stage But I’m still turning the leaf of the very last page In the afterglow The ringing’s getting softer now The streetlights are the only spotlights left I’ve got glitter in my hair I’ve got the setlist in my head still glowing Just a little bit of afterglow
