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
