Scars in the Ledger Line

Intro

Corner shop on Talbot, chair number three still creaks

Mr. Odum kept a ledger for the debts and for the streaks

Not the money kind exactly, the kind that marks your skin

Said every scar tell a story bout the fight you didn't win

Verse 1

Nine years old, split my brow on the fire escape rail

Odum wiped it, stitched it, wrote the date without fail

Page forty-three, my name in blue, "boy fell, boy healed"

Said the body keeps a record that the mouth won't ever yield

Watched him mark the regulars, line by line by line

Cornell's knuckle from the plant, Renee's burn from the grind

Every mark had a Tuesday, every scar had a name

Shop smelled like talc and iron, felt like church without the shame

By fifteen I had three entries, one I don't discuss

Blade caught me on Featherstone chasing after a bus

Odum didn't ask questions, just cleaned it, wrote it down

Said the ledger ain't for judging, just for keeping the town

Watched the old heads flip the pages like a family tree

Every wound a witness to a version of me

Half the block in that book, bleeding into the spine

Living proof we made it, scars in the ledger line

Chorus

Scars in the ledger line, every mark got a reason

Nothing healed for nothing, nothing cut without a season

Odum's book don't lie, it just tells you what we paid

Scars in the ledger line, that's the price that stayed

Verse 2

Grew up, moved away, kept a photo of the page

Forty-three, my whole childhood pressed like a stage

Called Odum every Christmas till the number stopped ringing

Found out from Cornell the shop closed, the last chair singing

Went back for the funeral, chair still had his coat

Notebook on the counter with a rubber band and a note

Said "give it to the ones who bled here, they'll know what it's worth"

I flipped through every scar and I swear I felt the earth

Renee's page, Cornell's page, mine right after his

My son's name ain't in there yet, but I know one day it is

Cause the block still cuts you somewhere, corners still got teeth

Somebody gotta keep the record underneath

I bought the chair, kept the mirror, hung the book on the wall

Started writing down my nephew's, first the fall

Then the stitches, then the healing, same ritual, same rhyme

We still bleeding into something, scars in the ledger line

Chorus

Scars in the ledger line, every mark got a reason

Nothing healed for nothing, nothing cut without a season

Odum's book don't lie, it just tells you what we paid

Scars in the ledger line, that's the price that stayed

Bridge

Some men frame diplomas, some men frame degrees

I framed a page of scar tissue, hung it where he'd see

Cause a wound that gets recorded ain't a wound that goes to waste

It's a witness with a heartbeat, in a permanent place

Outro

Chair still creaks on Talbot, book still on the shelf

Every scar's a sentence that I wrote about myself

Close the ledger gentle, let the ink stay dry

We still here to write it, that's the reason why