Runes on the Ledger (version 2)

Intro

Chain-link gate, brass scale bolted to the frame

Board behind the counter, holds every kind of name

Not letters, not numbers — marks a hand can trust

Grandfather's chalk is gone but the wood still holds the dust

Verse

Grandfather ran the scale behind the chain-link since forty-nine

Weighed the copper by the pound, weighed the sorrow by the sign

Every family brought a bag of pipe torn out a wall

Every winter took a name, every name he'd chalk and stall

Kept a board of hash marks, symbols only kin could read

Half a moon for a widow, a triangle for a thief

Not to shame him, just to track him, see if he'd come back

Some men vanished with the frost, some men earned a second act

He told me weight's the only language don't nobody fake

Told me every rune's a witness to the choice a man could make

Stack the brass, sort the steel, let the copper shine like teeth

Man who brings you nothing golden still deserves the truth beneath

I was seven holding chalk, tracing marks I don't own

Learned the language of the hungry 'fore I learned to read a phone

By the barrel fire at midnight watched him write another name

Said the ledger outlives money, said the mark's the only claim

Chorus

Runes on the ledger, every notch a name that stayed

Scale don't lie, the weight decides who made it out the gate

I keep the count in chalk so the frost don't take the truth

Runes on the ledger, that's the only proof

Verse

Now the yard's mine, chain-link rusted but the gate still swings

Condos climbing where the smelter used to cough its rings

Kids bring extension cords, copper stripped from empty homes

Same hunger, different decade, still it's weight against the bone

I don't judge the bag, I judge the hands that carried it

Track marks on a forearm don't erase the arithmetic

Wrote a rune last Tuesday for a woman shook like leaves

Gave her full price knowing half of it was borrowed from the streets

Momma used to say the scale's the closest thing to fair