Wolfcoat Testament (Version 2)

Intro

Sold the truck to pay the lawyer, sold the lawyer's faith for time

Every contract that we signed was written in between the lines

Learned to read the spaces, learned to live inside the wait

Learned that moving slow sometimes is how you navigate

Verse

Fifteen years watching Pops get smaller in the chair

Hospice nurse with gentle hands, we couldn't afford her care

So my sister learned the catheter, learned the morphine clock

Learned that love ain't theory when you're holding what you got

Brother quit his college, said the tuition money's yours

Now he's working doubles at the warehouse, healing sores

On his palms from loading, on his chest from what he swallowed

Every meal he didn't eat so we could have tomorrow

Momma's still got that same coat, patches on the patches

We could buy her new one, but she wears it like a atlas

Every burn and every stain is proof that we survived

Every thread she wouldn't let us throw away is why we're alive

Creditors came calling, we just kept the answering machine

Said we didn't have the words, only time and gasoline

Chorus

This is how we honor it, honor it, honor it

Every scar and every sacrifice, we honor it

This is how we honor it, honor it, honor it

Every hand that held us up, we honor it

Verse

Watched my nephew learn to count in increments of rent

Watched him understand that childhood was a luxury we spent

On his older sister's school supplies, her books, her chance

Now she's teaching inner city kids their second glance

At a future that ain't written yet, at a hope that's earned

At a path that's marked by people who refused to turn

Back to what was promised, back to what they said we'd be

We became the answer to a question nobody asked of free

Grandmother in the garden growing greens on concrete seams

Selling mason jars of pickled hope to neighbors with no means

Every family that she fed stayed rooted, stayed aware

That survival ain't a solo thing, it's soil that we share

Now the garden's got a name, now the block knows where to come

Now the legacy's the lesson that we built it, now we're young

Chorus

This is how we honor it, honor it, honor it

Every scar and every sacrifice, we honor it

This is how we honor it, honor it, honor it

Every hand that held us up, we honor it

Bridge

They say strength is what you carry when you got no other choice

We say strength is what you choose when silence had a voice

We say strength is in the detail, in the dinner kept warm late

In the signature, the promise, in the nerve to recreate

Outro

Sold the truck but kept the memories, that's the only way it works

Built the future on the backbone of everybody's hurt

Now we stand like monuments to people who refused to break

This is how we honor it, this is how we create