Corner Store Scripture (version 2)

Verse

Odell's store on Ashgrove, bell tied with a shoelace

Fluorescent light humming over milk crates and old face

Kept a spiral notebook underneath the register

Every name we owed him wrote in pencil, never bitter

My mother's name sat in there when the check ran short in winter

Odell crossed it slow, said pay me back whenever

I was eight years old watching how the trust got carried

Nobody signed a thing but everybody's word got married

Pre-Chorus

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

What's a name worth when the times turn cruel

Odell never asked, just erased and let it slide

Said the block remembers who paid theirs on time

Chorus

Corner store scripture, pencil not the pen

Cross a name off once the debt comes back again

Everybody's owed here, everybody's owed there

That's the only gospel that the whole block swears

Verse

Store almost folded when the rent hiked up in autumn

Odell's hands too tired, ledger dust, and nothing's caught in

I walked in with an envelope, said this covers Tuesday

Every name still owing, told 'em pass it forward, do me

that same favor someday when your own tab's running heavy

Turned out debt was never paper, it was how we married

loyalty to hunger, kept the shelves from going empty

I got my line erased the week I turned twenty-plenty

Pre-Chorus

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

What's a name worth when the times turn cruel

Odell never asked, just erased and let it slide

Said the block remembers who paid theirs on time

Chorus

Corner store scripture, pencil not the pen

Cross a name off once the debt comes back again

Everybody's owed here, everybody's owed there

That's the only gospel that the whole block swears

Bridge

Now I keep my own book, hidden under the counter

Names of cousins, strangers, kids who need one more quarter

Odell's in a home now, doesn't know my face no longer

But the pencil's still moving, and the ledger's getting longer

Chorus

Corner store scripture, pencil not the pen

Cross a name off once the debt comes back again

Everybody's owed here, everybody's owed there

That's the only gospel that the whole block swears