Ledger of the Unbroken

Intro

Leather-bound ledger, spine cracked down the middle

Uncle kept it under the register, called it the riddle

Every name in pencil, every debt paid in ink

Say the store stayed open 'cause nobody let it sink

Verse

Grandfather ran the corner store on credit and on faith

Wrote your name in that ledger when your pockets came up late

Rent man knocking Tuesday, kids ain't ate since Sunday

Uncle Ray slide a loaf and mark it down, said pay me one day

That's how the block survived when the bank shut its gate

Fifty names in that ledger, some crossed out too late

Mrs. Odell's boy got shot, debt forgiven, line struck through

Ashes on the counter where the candle for him grew

I was ten years old counting cans behind the register

Watched my uncle turn a hustle into scripture, half minister

Plate of eggs for the old man who fixed the walk-in freezer

No collateral but character, that's the only appraiser

Now the store's long gone, they paved it for a lot

Ledger's in my glovebox, still it's the only thing I got

Every name a chapter, every debt a testament

Paper thin and yellow but it never once bent

Chorus

We paid it back in favors when the money wasn't there

The ledger don't lie, it just remembers who was scared

Cross a name when it's settled, keep the rest in ink

That's the only bank that never once let this block sink

Verse

I picked it up at nineteen when the block picked me instead

Started my own version, kept it folded by the bed

Not currency, it's memory, every debt's a human face

Man who bailed me out in ‘Nine still got a permanent place

Wrote my mother's name in there the year she lost the lease

Wrote it off in gratitude, called the debt a piece of peace

Kept a column just for scars, another one for gates

The ones we opened for each other, the ones we had to break

Cousin Trell got twelve years, his tab still on the page

Send commissary money, call it interest on the cage

Some folks think it's soft to owe, I think it's how we breathe

Every plate we split at midnight is a debt we don't relieve

Rewrote it clean last winter, kept the old one in a drawer

Ash got on the cover from the space heater by the door

Still legible, still standing, like the hands that held the pen

This the only inheritance that outlives all of them

Chorus

We paid it back in favors when the money wasn't there

The ledger don't lie, it just remembers who was scared

Cross a name when it's settled, keep the rest in ink

That's the only bank that never once let this block sink

Bridge

They say the strong forget who fed them when they had nothing

I keep the record so the feeding don't stop counting

Every name still open is a mouth that's still alive

That's the only interest rate that ever let us thrive

Outro

Ledger's getting thicker, ink is running thin

Pass it to my nephew when the next chapter begins

Tell him cross the debts in kindness, not a single one erased

'Cause the unbroken keep the record even after they've replaced