Valknut on the Chain

Verse 1

Mama worked the night shift, folding other people's cloth

Came home with lint in her hair and a debt she couldn't cross

Paid the landlord Tuesday, fed us Wednesday on what's left

Taught me how to stretch a dollar till it ain't got nothing left

I was ten when I learned silence was a kind of currency

Watched her trade her voice for rent, watched her trade her dignity

Scar on her left palm from a steam press in '94

Still pressed shirts every morning like the scar don't mean a thing no more

Pre-Chorus

She never asked for nothing but a roof that wouldn't leak

Never asked the world for mercy, built her own from concrete

Chorus

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

Every hand that bleeds just builds us further down

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

Verse 2

Now I'm standing at the gate where my mother clocked in

Twenty years of double shifts, now I'm walking in her skin

I don't carry what she carried but I carry what she earned

Every scar's a rune, every rune's a lesson that I learned

Keep her old ID card in my wallet like a prayer

Gold letters worn to silver but the number's still there

Tell my little sister: we don't break, we just bend

The weight's the point—the weight's how legends ascend

Pre-Chorus

She never asked for nothing but a roof that wouldn't leak

Never asked the world for mercy, built her own from concrete

Chorus

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

Every hand that bleeds just builds us further down

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

Bridge

The lint still settles on my shoulders when I dream

And I'm grateful for the settling, grateful for the seams

She's watching from the morning shift, watching from the fold

Every crown I wear is hers, purchased and sold

Chorus

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

This is how we turn the ash into a crown

Every hand that bleeds just builds us further down

This is how we turn the ash into a crown