Runes on a Ration Card (version 2)

Intro

Grandmother's card, cardboard thin as skin

Ink gone brown where the hunger settled in

Every stamp a week she gave her share away

Said the mark don't feed you, it just counts the days

Verse 1

Nineteen and starving, snow stacked to the sill

Queue wrapped the block twice, nobody moving still

She kept a nail for scratching numbers on the tin

Five loaves a fortnight, split among her kin

Traded her ring for flour, kept the empty band

Wore it on a string so the guards wouldn't understand

Chalk on the doorframe, one line for the dead

One line for the neighbor she carried home instead

Bread line taught her patience sharper than a blade

Silence was currency, and quiet, how she paid

She scratched a rune for every mouth she couldn't feed

Called it superstition, called it planting seed

By spring the card was full, edges soft as cloth

Kept it folded flat beneath the almanac and moth

Said the marks remember what the memory forgets

Every rationed hour is a debt that never sets

Chorus

One mark for the hunger, one mark for the cost (counted)

One for every winter that we counted but we lost

One mark for the ones I carried, one I couldn't save

Every rune's a ledger for the mouths I have to save

Verse 2

Now I keep the habit, different kind of war

Scratch the wall in county, ninety days and four

Same nail, same patience, same rationed light

Counting what I'm owed instead of appetite

Traded time for silence, traded silence for release

Kept a tin of numbers underneath the piece

Called my momma Sunday, told her keep the faith

Said the marks don't lie, they just hold the weight

Learned to stretch a dollar like she stretched the bread

Feed the young ones first, eat what's left instead

Ledger in my pocket where the dope money been

Every scratch a witness to the life I'm living in

Some men count they blessings, I count what it c