Scars Fold Into Currency (version 2)

Verse 1

Fourth floor walk-up, Sharpie tally on the door

Counted debts in scratches, kept the score

Fence wire caught my palm at seventeen

Running product for a cousin, kept the family clean

Denim jacket soaked in copper, wouldn't wash it out

Wore it like a ledger, wore it like a drought

Corner store on Delmar knows my face by the limp

Traded blood for credit, traded credit for the imp

Uls that come when winter cuts the block in half

Learned to read a bruise the way you read a graph

Pre-Chorus

What's a wound worth when the rent's still due

What's a mark worth if it carries you through

I've been counting mine since '92

Chorus

Scars fold into currency

Spend what the skin remembers

Every mark's a receipt

Paid in pieces, not surrender

Verse 2

Mama's kitchen table, stitched my brow with thread

Said a needle's cheaper than the hospital bed

Learned to hold the pain the way you hold a note

Cash it when you need it, keep the rest for hope

Nine years later, same table, different son

Teaching him the tally, teaching him to run

From the debts that ain't his but land on him anyway

Told him every scar's a coin, spend it right one day

Barbershop on ninth street, they call me by my cuts

Not the flashy kind, the kind that earns you trust

Pre-Chorus

What's a wound worth when the rent's still due

What's a mark worth if it carries you through

I've been counting mine since '92

Chorus

Scars fold into currency

Spend what the skin remembers

Every mark's a receipt

Paid in pieces, not surrender

Bridge

Some nights I want the skin smooth, want the debt erased

Want a version of my story with no wire, no chase

But smooth skin never taught nobody how to stand

So I keep the ledger open, keep it in my hand

Chorus

Scars fold into currency

Spend what the skin remembers

Every mark's a receipt

Paid in pieces, not surrender