Loyalty Written in Static (version 2)

Intro

Buzzer box by the door, wires crossed since '09

Three short taps means clear, one long means decline

Everybody on the block learned the static like a hymn

Loyalty ain't spoken here, it's coded in the din

Verse

Fourth floor intercom, Sharpie names half rubbed away

Odalys wrote 4B in cursive, block letters for 3A

Press the button twice for cab, three times for the law

Learned the difference 'tween a warning and a draw

Nine years old and already fluent in the hiss

Static crackle tell you more than any face-to-face kiss

Landlord doing walkthroughs, Tuesdays like clockwork

Buzzer rings a pattern, whole building start to network

Curtains pulled, extension cords hid behind the stove

Grandma's space heater dancing to a code we wrote

Never met the man in 6C but I know his knock

Two quick, then a pause — that's how you set the clock

Scarred knuckles on that panel, forty years of dust and grease

Every crackle in the wire is a promise, is a peace

We ain't got a contract, ain't no paper, ain't no pen

Just static on a Tuesday saying watch for me again

Chorus

Loyalty written in static, nobody taught us the words

We just learned the pattern, learned it building by building, block by block, heard

Three short means we good, one long means run

Loyalty written in static — that's how the whole block stayed one

Verse

Year the wires got old, kid named Marcus sold the code

Told the new landlord's people how the buzzer system flowed

Building got its walkthroughs turned to raids inside a week

Half the block got scattered 'fore the static learned to speak

I ain't judge him hard, his mama needed dialysis paid

Loyalty's a currency and sometimes debts get made

Still I felt the silence different when the box went dead

Static used to hum like breathing, now it's silent instead

Rewired half the panel with a soldering gun I bought

Taught the new tenants the taps, the pauses, what they're not

Some things you rebuild slower than the drywall and the paint

Trust don't come back buzzing like it's simple, like it ain't

Marcus came around last spring, stood outside in the rain

I let him in on one long ring — some debts don't need explained

Scars ain't always visible, some live inside the wire

Static carries what we couldn't say out loud, or louder, higher

Chorus

Loyalty written in static, nobody taught us the words

We just learned the pattern, learned it building by building, block by block, heard

Three short means we good, one long means run

Loyalty written in static — that's how the whole block stayed one

Bridge

They tore the building down last fall, panel and all

Kept one piece of the buzzer wire, taped it inside my wall

New building got a keypad now, digital, cold and clean

Don't nobody hum through wires no more, don't nobody read between

But I still tap my knuckles twice on doors when I walk through

Habit outlives the hardware — the code still rings me and you

Outro

Static ain't just noise if you learned to hear it right