Weight in the Wire

Intro

Phone stays off between the hours

Clock don't move the same way twice

Pocket got a weight that don't show

Verse 1

Cousin said the money moving faster than the cops

Twenty-two and running numbers from a basement with a lock

Told me sit down, take the envelope, don't ask where it goes

I was hungry, rent was louder than the voice that says no

Learned to count in hundreds, learned to walk without a sound

Learned that loyalty's a currency that gets passed around

Six months in, I'm holding half the block's emergency fund

Responsibility taste different when you're twenty-one

Marcus got arrested Thursday, case went cold by Friday night

Said my name once in a statement, I ain't seen a trial light

That's the weight, that's the wire—knowing what you know and staying mute

One decision made at nineteen got your whole life on mute

Momma asked me where the money come from, I just stared

Didn't have the words to tell her how the neighborhood prepared

So I paid the rent and held my tongue and wore the silence clean

Turned into the kind of man she raised me not to be

Chorus

Weight in the wire, can't lay it down

Carry it quiet through your hometown

Weight in the wire, can't lay it down

Every choice got a price, don't make a sound

Verse 2

Detective knocked on door at six, I knew exactly why

Cousin flipped, gave up three names, I was number five

But the lawyer came from somewhere, bail was posted clean

Somebody made a call, made sure I stayed unseen

That's how you know the ledger's real—it ain't written down

It's the way they move around you when you're the only sound

Didn't testify, didn't break, didn't nod or blink

Just became the kind of person nobody wants to think

About at Christmas, at the table when the family's fed

I'm the ghost that everybody knows but leaves unsaid

Girlfriend left me, said she couldn't love a man with debts like that

Debts that don't come with a statement, don't come back

Now I'm twenty-four and I can't remember what I wanted first

Before the envelope, before the thirst

Before I learned that silence was a skill you could exchange

For safety, for a future, for a slower kind of pain

Verse 3

Brother asked me last week if I'd do it all again

I said nothing for a long time, then I told him when

You got nothing but your name and a mother working doubles

You don't get to choose which kind of trouble

Comes knocking at your window at the end of every month

You just choose how much you carry and how much you don't say much

The wire don't get lighter, it just redistributes weight

Some days I wake up wondering if I could calculate

What my silence bought versus what it cost

Some days I forget that there's a difference at all

Chorus

Weight in the wire, can't lay it down

Carry it quiet through your hometown

Weight in the wire, can't lay it down

Every choice got a price, don't make a sound

Outro

Phone stays off between the hours

Clock don't move the same way twice

Pocket got a weight that don't show