The Weight of What I Owed

Intro

Corner store closed in oh-four, chain still on the door

Notebook in a drawer somewhere, nobody's keeping score

Verse

Mr. Alvarez kept a composition book behind the register

Every name in pencil, every debt a whispered secret ledger

Three forty for the bread, six ten for the light bill milk

Wrote it down in cursive, never once collected on the built-up

He fed the block on credit when the checks came slow

Said pay me back whenever, kid, I already know

My mother's name in there, page nine, second row

Twelve dollars and a promise that she made three winters ago

I used to sweep his floors for quarters, watch him tally up the loss

Chalk marks on the wall behind the counter, crossed and crossed

He never once said sorry when the numbers ran too deep

Just closed the drawer at nine and told me get some sleep

Store's a laundromat now, machines where the counter stood

I walk past twice a week and think about the neighborhood

He died with forty pages full of debts he'd never call

I inherited the interest, and I can't pay none of it at all

Chorus

I carry it in silence, folded like a coat

The weight of what I owed

Not dollars, not the interest, just the names I never wrote

The weight of what I owed

It sits under my ribs like something swallowed whole

The weight of what I owed

I'm still making payments nobody's here to know

The weight of what I owed

Verse

Found the notebook at the estate sale, dollar in a milk crate box

Flipped to my mother's page and felt my chest lock like a padlock

She paid him back eventually, small bills folded twice

He wrote "settled" in the margin, didn't even need it iced

But there's names below hers never got that word

Mrs. Odom, page eleven, debt still incurred

I started asking round the block who's left from back then

Found her daughter working nights, said her mama's gone since ten

Years now, the debt still open like a wound that never scarred

I paid it forward, slid an envelope under her door, hit hard

No note, no name, just cash and a piece torn from the page

Figured that's the only way to close a debt this old with age

I kept the book, I read it some nights when the block gets quiet

Every name a person who kept somebody's family from the riot

Of hunger, of the light bill, of the landlord at the door

That's arithmetic that never shows up on a store's floor

Chorus

I carry it in silence, folded like a coat

The weight of what I owed

Not dollars, not the interest, just the names I never wrote

The weight of what I owed

It sits under my ribs like something swallowed whole

The weight of what I owed

I'm still making payments nobody's here to know

The weight of what I owed

Bridge

I used to think the debt was mine alone to settle

Now I know it passes hand to hand like borrowed metal

Every name he wrote in pencil, I write mine in ink

Somebody's kid will read my ledger, stop and think

Outro

Store's long gone, the book's still warm from being held

Some debts get paid in cash, some get paid in what you tell