Longship on Layaway

Intro

Ticket stub curled soft in the coffee tin lid

Twelve dollars down, the rest on what daddy did

Yard out back holding rust like a secret it kept

A hull under tarp since the summer he wept

Verse

He bought the keel first, said the frame comes second

Worked the graveyard shift so the payment plan beckoned

Plate by plate at the salvage yard, cash on Fridays

Called it his longship, said legends come in installments, not highways

Ash on his knuckles from the torch he'd run

Said a man ain't broke long as the welding's done

Neighbors thought he lost it, chasing driftwood dreams

Didn't know the receipts were stitched into his seams

Gate latch rusted shut on the fence out back

Same one he'd lean on counting what the crew lacked

Scar on his forearm shaped just like the coast

Said the sea don't forgive but it don't ask for the most

Sixteen months of Sundays, one plank at a time

Neighbors watched the skeleton start to climb

I was seven, thought a boat was just a boat

Didn't know he was building the only thing he'd own

Hook

Longship on layaway, paying it in Sundays

Ticket in the drawer where the good silver stays

Hull ain't finished but the debt's almost done

Some men build a legacy one plate, one payment, one

Verse

Grew up, took the torch when his hands went slow

Arthritis in the knuckles where the old scars go

Finished the transom the winter that he died

Painted the name in gold, stood back and cried

Not from the loss but the weight coming clear

Every payment was a prayer he was scared to say here

Sold the tarp for scrap, kept the frame for the yard

Learned that finishing something is the hardest part of hard

Took her out on the bay when the ice broke thin

Engine caught rust but the hull still holds him in

Every plate's a ledger, every seam's a debt paid

Every scar's a receipt from the price that he made

Now I keep the coffee tin where the old stub stays

Twelve dollars down was the start of his praise

Legacy ain't loud, it's a slow kind of gain

Built like a longship, one Sunday, one chain

Hook

Longship on layaway, paying it in Sundays

Ticket in the drawer where the good silver stays

Hull ain't finished but the debt's almost done

Some men build a legacy one plate, one payment, one

Bridge

Some men leave a fortune, some men leave a frame

Mine left me the patience to finish what he'd claim

Ice on the water, gold letters catching light

The boat still floats, so the debt was never really a fight

Outro

Coffee tin's empty now, the stub's gone soft with age

Hull's in the harbor, not the yard, not the page

Paid in full, the name still holds the gold

Longship on layaway — that's the only debt worth owed