Ledger of Small Mercies

Intro

Composition book behind the register, spine cracked with tape

Miss Coral wrote in pencil so the numbers could escape

Everybody on Delmar owed her something come the first

Debt wasn't shame in that store, it's how we learned our worth

Verse

Eight years old, a dollar short for a loaf of bread

She licked the pencil, wrote my name where "paid" should've read

Column on the left for owing, right side for what's gave

Half the block's whole story living in that gray-lined page

Junebug's mama got three months of milk marked in that book

Paid it back in garden tomatoes, Miss Coral barely looked

Twice at what she wrote, just nodded, tore the debt in half

Told him grace ain't a loan you chase, it's a seed you plant and pass

Watched the register drawer come up short on a Friday night

Watched her slide a candy bar to a kid too proud to fight

Told him square it Sunday, never asked the boy but once

Learned more about currency than any dollar ever taught

Store smelled like cardboard, cold cuts, and the chalk dust of the rent

Every name in pencil meant the trust was never permanent

Erasers wore thin circles where forgiveness got applied

That's the first ledger ever taught me how to stay alive

Hook

Ledger of small mercies, pencil, never ink

Everybody owes somebody more than what you think

Column on the left, column on the right

Grace is just a debt that never asks you twice

Verse

Nineteen years later, I keep my own book in my head

No pencil, just the memory of who showed and who fled

Rico got the rent money the month his sister got sick

Never wrote it down, but I remember every tick

Denim pocket heavy with