Interest on What's Owed

Intro

Marble notebook, cover cracked, chalk dust in the spine,

every debt got a decimal, every name got a line.

Verse 1

Nine years old, refrigerator hummed on empty shelves,

mama's check ain't clear till Friday, we just borrowed from ourselves.

Corner store on Vale Street, Ms. Odessa kept the door,

let us walk with bread and bologna, wrote the total on the floor.

Not the floor — the counter, chalk beside the register,

tallied up in cursive like she loved us, not like debtors.

Six dollars turned to twelve, twelve turned into twenty-three,

she never asked for extra, but the number followed me.

I used to think a favor was a gift that had no cost,

didn't know that every kindness get recorded, never lost.

She'd say pay me when you able, soft, like it was nothing,

but I felt that number breathing every night I went to sleep hungry.

Ten years pass, I'm counting different paper, different pace,

but that chalk mark never left me, it just changed its face.

Some folks think a debt like that just fades with time and dust,

nah, it just compounds in silence, waiting on the trust.

Chorus

It's interest on what's owed,

some debts don't stay in dollars, some just grow.

Every kindness got a balance, every hand out got a code,

I'm still paying interest on what's owed.

Verse 2

Twenty years later I pull up in something clean and quiet,

glovebox got an envelope, figured cash could buy me quiet.

Store's still standing, paint peeled different, sign half faded,

Ms. Odessa's granddaughter running register now, unshaded.

I ask about the total, she just laughs and shakes her head,

grandma passed two winters back, but she said you'd come, she said.

Left a letter in the register, folded like a receipt,

said the debt was never money, said the point was to repeat.

Said don't pay me, pay the next kid standing hungry at your door,

that's the only interest that was ever worth keeping score.

I stood there with the envelope, my hand not knowing what to do,

cash felt heavy, almost cheap, next to what she asked me to.

So I left the twenty in the register, walked out into the block,

bought three bags for three kids waiting, didn't check the clock.

That's the ledger nobody prints, no interest rate, no term,

just the compound of a kindness passed on every turn.

Chorus

It's interest on what's owed,

some debts don't stay in dollars, some just grow.

Every kindness got a balance, every hand out got a code,

I'm still paying interest on what's owed.

Bridge

I keep a notebook now myself, chalk traded for a pen,

write the name of every kid I slide a twenty to again.

Not for credit, not for praise, not to balance out the past,

just to keep the number moving faster than the debt can last.

Momma used to say some things don't ever get erased,

just passed hand to hand until the weight gets replaced.

I ain't clearing what I owe, I'm just extending out the line,

one more name in cursive, one more chalk mark down the spine.

Outro

Marble notebook's full now, starting on a second one,