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
