“Vailfall”

“Vailfall”

A Song by Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.

Music & Lyrics Copyright © 2026 – All Rights Reserved Worldwide

LYRICS

Under two suns in a softened sky,
There is a Veiled world where the wounded arrive,
No one will measure what you can give,
No one will ask what your sorrow is worth.

Warm are the kitchens, quiet the roads,
Gardens grow where the broken come home,
And nothing here wants anything from you,
Nothing but time, and the truth you move through.

Beyond the light, beyond the glass,
Golden shadows slowly pass.
They look so near, they seem so far,
Like who you were and who you are.

There is a far shore beyond the sorrow,
There is a deeper place below,
You cannot borrow someone’s tomorrow,
You cannot force your heart to go.

But even while you’re reaching,
Even while you fall,
Something deep inside you
Has already heard the call.

The woman came with a silence inside,
A voice that had loved her, a beautiful lie,
She gave what she had to a phantom never there,
Till all that remained was an empty chair.

Then through the evening she saw him below,
A man standing calm in the deep golden glow,
She pressed to the veil and called through the light,
“Tell me the way. Tell me how to be all right.”

A man below heard her voice as a ripple of gold,
He knew every question because he’d asked them before,
He had stood where she stood with his hands on the glass,
Begging the peaceful to tell him what passed.

He answered her softly though nothing came through,
Only a warmth she could never trace to,
For the one thing he knew, the one thing he’d learned,
Could never be given, only slowly earned.

There is a far shore beyond the sorrow,
There is a deeper place below,
You cannot borrow someone’s tomorrow,
You cannot force your heart to go.

But even while you’re reaching,
Even while you fall,
Something deep inside you
Has already heard the call.

And a gray cat crossed the veil like a doorway of rain,
Carrying her tears to the far side again,
Then back to her lap with the warmth the man below had known,
A bridge without language saying, “You are not alone.”

Some things cross the veil without speaking.
Some things reach where words cannot go.
Some things live in the warmth between us,
And somehow the wounded still know.

Summer grew long in the doubled light,
The woman grew tired of losing the fight,
She stopped asking the man below for the secret or sign,
Stopped trying to live in a future not mine.

She tended her garden, sat down at the table,
Accepted the kindness when she became able,
And one quiet morning an hour had gone by
Without that old voices screaming inside.

She thought she was standing.
She thought she was still.
She never saw how she was changing until…

The sky began falling in ribbons of white,
A curtain descending through double sunlight,
She held the gray cat and lifted her face,
And for the first time she did not race.

No fighting the current.
No begging the sea.
No breaking herself against what she could see.

The veil settled softly.
The surface grew small.
And the woman discovered she’d been sinking through it all.

I found the far shore beyond the sorrow,
But not in the way I thought I would go,
I could not borrow somebody’s tomorrow,
I had to become what I wanted to know.

And all of my reaching,
And all of my fear,
Were part of the journey
That finally brought me here.

Then out of the gold came the man below she had known,
No veil between them, no glass, no unknown.
She waited for answers, for wisdom, for why…

“You are here, and not alone”

“I hear you.”

Now sometimes the woman looks upward and sees
A new burning figure pressed hard to the sheets,
Mouthing the questions she once asked too,
“Tell me the secret. Tell me what to do.”

She answers each time though the words cannot rise,
And the gray cat moves upward through layers of light,
Carrying warmth from the old to the new,
The only kind of answer that ever gets through.

You cannot be pulled through the veil.
You cannot be carried across.
But someone can sit on the far side
And remember the shape of your loss.

Be still when the light starts falling.
You are farther along than you know.
One day you’ll look through the veil at another…

And you’ll be the one
reaching back
from the gold
waiting for your story to be told.