Ledger of Small Scars

Intro

Fourth floor kitchen table, radiator hiss

Mama's ledger open to a page I still miss

Pencil names in columns, nobody signed a thing

The block don't run on money, it runs on what you bring

Verse

Marble notebook, cover cracked, kept under the toaster

Mama's handwriting counted debts like a church-note poster

Ms. Odell owe us sugar, page eleven, autumn ninety-four

We owe the Grahams a ladder, ink still fresh by the door

Not about the money, it's about who showed

Who drove Pop to dialysis when the Buick wouldn't go

Extension cord stretched window to window, third floor share

Kept the freezer running when the landlord cut the wire

Nobody signed a contract, nobody called a bank

But everybody in that building knew exactly where they rank

I used to think it's petty, small favors, minor stuff

Then the winter hit in ninety-six and petty was enough

Mrs. Reyes brought us stew for eleven straight nights

Never asked for nothing back, just wrote her name in light

I asked my mother why she kept it, she said debts don't disappear

Said the ledger ain't for owing