Valknut in My Chain (Version 2)

Intro

Valknut on the chain, three knots pulled tight

Grandpa cut it out of tin under the kitchen light

Said every triangle's a door that a dead man walks through

I wear it like a debt that I'm still paying due

Verse

First knot tied the night the landlord changed the lock

Slept in the Buick with the heater on a knot

Momma sold her ring for a plate of eggs and rice

I ate it slow like it was the only meal that's nice

Second knot came harder, county gave me a number

Cell block six, radiator hum like distant thunder

Learned to fold a letter into something like a prayer

Read it by the light that slipped under the door there

Third knot burned the trailer down on Ash Street in July

Watched the smoke write cursive letters climbing up the sky

Lost the photo of my father, kept the frame though it's charred

Said the frame remembers even when the picture's scarred

Three knots, three graves I walked out of standing

Ink across my collarbone where the chain keeps landing

Every triangle's a door, every door was locked

I'm the key that grew from the metal that I fought

Chorus

Valknut in my chain, three knots hold what I've been

Every closed door taught me how a warrior begins

It ain't the shine, it's the weight of who I used to be

I carry them like witnesses so the dead can walk with me

Verse

Now the young ones ask me why I wear the triangles three

I tell them every corner is a version of history

One for the boy who begged the guard to let the letter through