Four a.m. on Calton Hill,
the mist eats every street it finds.
Only the castle floating there,
a ghost ship made of ancient stone and time.

I dipped my voice in a bottle of whisky,
and it doesn’t want to come back out.
It’s warm in there, a little drunk,
happy to stay unheard, without a sound.

They closed the old “Station of Souls”
back in twenty-sixteen.
A club where we fought with strangers,
and held strangers like a dream.

Now it’s just the Balmoral,
no balm for anything.
I slept on Grassmarket barstools
after I buried my first love in a song I used to sing.

The police shook my shoulder, laughing,
“Get up, this town won’t take more ghosts.”
But Edinburgh is still swallowing
every broken heart it hosts.

The tram screams through the empty streets
at three forty-seven tonight.
It sounds like my mother on the stairs,
thinking I’m asleep when she kills the light.
But I don’t sleep, no, I just listen
to every echo in this town.

Edinburgh, you’re not my home,
you’re the ex I can’t let go.
You always know my brand-new cracks,
every place I come undone.

You’re beautiful from far away,
but you bruise me when I stay.
You throw my heart into the Firth of Forth,
just to teach it how to fight the waves.

Girls on the cold Royal Mile
in tartan skirts that barely move.
No one here is saving face,
when you’re starving just to feel alive and prove.

I once kissed a man beneath
the shadow of David Hume.
He smelled like cigarettes and questions,
and old philosophy in bloom.

He said, “You’re just like Edinburgh,
lovely if you don’t get too close.”
I forgot his name by morning,
but the taste stayed like a ghost.

[Instrumental Break: Scottish pipes and drums, cinematic and emotional, no vocals. Traditional snare pattern and deep drums, bagpipes playing the chorus melody, soaring fiddle solo on top.]

The whisky here tastes like the sea,
like salt and quiet despair.
Like someone took your open heart
and threw it off the ferry there.

Let it sink or let it swim,
let it rise on broken foam.
This city never lets you claim
you’ve really left, you’re really gone.

Edinburgh, you’re not my home,
you’re the ex I can’t outgrow.
You always find my brand-new wounds,
every door I try to close.

You’re beautiful from far away,
but you bruise me when I stay.
You throw my heart into the Firth of Forth,
and the waves just call my name.

Edinburgh, you’re not my home,
but you live beneath my skin.
Every time I think I’ve left,
you already know where I’ve been.