Wolf Tax (Version 2)

Intro

Basement door don't lock no more, hinges rust and creak

Mama's medicine cabinet empty every single week

Pills that cost what bread costs, choose between the two

I chose the cold instead, let the fever run me through

Verse 1

Started working corners at fourteen with a ledger and a pen

Keeping track of who owed what, when they'd pay it back again

Fifteen dollars here, twenty there, the math was simple math

But the men who couldn't pay would look away and take the wrath

Built a reputation quiet—not the kind that makes you known

Just the kind that keeps you breathing when you're standing all alone

Winter came and took my uncle, took him slow across three weeks

Watched my mother count his coins and separate the receipts

Every dollar that I made went straight into a box

Under floorboards in the kitchen, hidden from the locks

By the time I turned eighteen I had enough to leave

But I stayed and kept the ledger—that's the tax that you don't grieve

That's the price of being needed when the neighborhood runs thin

That's the weight you carry forward when survival's all you've been

Chorus

This is the wolf tax, what you pay to stay alive

This is the wolf tax, the cost of the climb

This is the wolf tax, what you owe to survive

This is the wolf tax, this is the line

Verse 2

Sister got recruited by a man with better plans

Promised her a future, put a ring up on her hand

Six months and he vanished, left her heavy with a child

I became the father then—became a man less mild

Worked two shifts at the warehouse, nights I'd run the numbers still

Taught my nephew how to count before he learned to read

Before he knew that some men break their promises like bread

Before he understood that love don't pay the rent ahead

Thirty now and gray's come in across my temple sides

Every scar's a lesson that I couldn't run and hide

There's a younger kid now asking me to teach him how to move

How to keep your head down, how to pay the price of proof

That you're willing to go hungry so your family can eat

That you'll trade your sleep for theirs and call it incomplete

Chorus

This is the wolf tax, what you pay to stay alive

This is the wolf tax, the cost of the climb

This is the wolf tax, what you owe to survive

This is the wolf tax, this is the line

Verse 3

Mother's in the house now, don't work nothing anymore

Medicine cabinet full and stocked, that's what the ledger's for

Nephew's fifteen, got his own ledger, got his own pen

Writing down the names of those who helped us break the bend

He don't know he's paying it, the tax that has no name

Just the work of watching those who came before sustain

I could've run away when I was young enough to fly

Instead I stayed and learned that some debts ain't meant to die

They just pass along like breath, like blood, like history

Like the knowledge that your struggle is somebody's victory

So I teach him how to count, teach him how to stand

Teach him that the wolf tax is the price of being a man

Outro