Odin's Interest Rate (version 2)

Intro

Lender came by Tuesday with a ledger and a clock

Said the interest grows like frost, compounds in the lock

Every day you breathe is borrowed, every meal's a debt

Some men take the terms, some men don't forget

Verse

My father took a loan when I was three months old

Said the banker smiled wide but his handshake felt cold

Twenty years to pay it back, but the rate kept climbing steep

By the time I learned to walk, we were already deep

He worked the night shift, then he worked the day

Double-shifted just to keep the wolves at bay

I watched him count the coins on the kitchen table, worn

Fingers stained with engine grease, his palms all torn

Ma kept a ledger too, subtracted every cent

Knew the math of survival, where the margin went

I was seven when he told me, son, the debt don't sleep

It follows like a shadow, runs a meter deep

He paid it down to nothing, but it cost him something more

Than the money that he owed them, left him hollowed to the core

Chorus

This is Odin's interest rate, the price of breathing free

Every stone you move today compounds what you'll be

This is Odin's interest rate, compounds what you'll be

Verse

By the time I turned sixteen, I was working in the yard

Hauling scrap and sorting steel, learning labor's language hard

Saw the men around me, some had given up the fight

Some had figured out the game and worked it into night

Foreman told me straight, kid, the debt don't discriminate

Rich or poor, the interest grows, you're always running late

But there's wisdom in the owing, if you learn to read the terms

Every scar across your knuckles is the knowledge that you've earned

I took a different route, I took the burden as my map

Built something from the grind that couldn't trap me in the gap

Paid the debt in full by thirty, but the real cost was the years

All the nights I didn't sleep, all the sacrifice sincere

Chorus

This is Odin's interest rate, the price of breathing free

Every stone you move today compounds what you'll be

This is Odin's interest rate, compounds what you'll be

Bridge

Now I tell my children different, I say the debt's a tool

Not a chain, but something you can study, something you can school

Interest teaches patience, teaches hunger, teaches sight

Teaches you the difference between surviving and the fight

Verse

I'm the lender now, and I remember every mark

Every calculation in the dark, every borrowed spark

But I don't charge the interest to the men who come to me

I charge them with the knowledge that the debt can set you free

Odin took an eye to learn the runes, to see the code

I took the weight of owing just to lighten up the load

For the next man walking in here broken, bent, and late

I say the interest rate's not high, I say the interest rate is fate

Outro

Tuesday's coming round again, the ledger and the clock

But the frost don't hold the same way when you've learned to pick the lock