Runes Beneath the Floorboard

Intro

Three a.m., house breathing slow like it's still alive

Floor remembers weight before the weight arrives

Grandma's nail heads catching light like little eyes

Every board a witness that refused to testify

Verse

Grandma kept a hammer and a Bible on one nail

Said the Good Book bends before the pine will ever fail

Nineteen thirty-something, when the banks closed every door

She pulled the plank up gentle, laid the silver on the floor

Wrapped it all in muslin, sealed the seam with tar

Told us floor's a ledger and every crack's a scar

Carved a cross beside a circle, said the mark was old

Kept the hunger honest, kept the winter's reach controlled

Preacher called it heathen, she just smiled and swept

Said a debt unspoken is a debt nobody's kept

Flood came in the spring and drowned the whole first floor

Boards held tight above the water, kept us near the door

She never told the deed man what she buried in that plank

Said the only bank worth trusting doesn't call itself a bank

Died before she told us every mark and what it meant

Left the house still standing where the current should've bent