Iron Psalms of the Broke

Intro

Mama kept the kitchen warm on a pilot light

Three kids in winter coats, sleeping back-to-back tight

She'd count the bills on Tuesday, count the days till work

Said survival ain't a feeling, it's a kind of hurt

Verse 1

Shift work at the hospital, twelve hours on her feet

Came home and boiled water, made the nothing taste like meat

My brother's shoes had cardboard where the sole got worn

She stitched them back together every single morn

The landlord came on the first, she'd meet him at the door

With half the rent in cash and promises for more

He'd nod and mark his ledger, gave her seven extra days

She never called it favor, called it finding ways

I watched her hands go rough, the creases filled with dark

She'd scrub the hospital floors, then come home to work in the dark

My sister learned to braid hair at fourteen, made some change

Mama said that's kingdom, turning what you got to grain

We didn't speak about the future, didn't dream out loud

Just moved like water through the cracks, just kept the house proud

Chorus

This is how we made it through

When the light was almost gone

This is how we made it through

Trading sleep for getting on

Verse 2

Winter of '08, the factory shut its gates

Daddy took two jobs, came home at half past eight

Mama's sister called from out of state with extra rent

He said we got it covered, hung the phone and bent

His back in kitchens where the heat would never quit

Came home and fixed the heater with a piece of kit

He'd say a man don't measure what he's worth in what he owns

It's measured in the doors he keeps unlocked, the debts he don't condone

My cousin needed tuition, they ain't have to think

Mama took an extra shift, Daddy worked the brink

They never spoke about the sacrifice, just moved like it was law

The kind of love that don't announce itself, just cuts into your jaw

I learned the arithmetic of making nothing stretch for four

How to read the subtle language of a parent keeping score

Chorus

This is how we made it through

When the light was almost gone

This is how we made it through

Trading sleep for getting on

Verse 3

Now I'm standing where they stood, with my own small ones

Thinking about the calculus of what we've won

Not in dollars or in status, but in knowing how to bear

The weight of other people's future as a weight you wear

My daughter asked me why we save the scraps of bread

I told her 'bout her grandmother, the wisdom in her thread

How she took the smallest portion, gave the bigger share

And how that kind of practice is a kind of prayer

The gate still rattles sometimes when the wind blows hard

I think about my father in that cold and narrow yard

And how he never broke, just bent like winter wheat

How he turned the hunger into something we could eat

This is the inheritance, no deed or title clear

Just the knowledge that you live because somebody near

Believed that getting through was worth the price they'd pay

That's the iron psalm, the way we're made

Outro