Intro
Rent book on the windowsill, leather cracked like a knuckle
Grandma marked it in symbols, said the landlord loved to hustle
Every month a new sign pressed in the margin, dark and small
Said reading numbers ain't enough, you gotta read the wall
Verse
She kept that book in a drawer beside the candle wax
Circled dates in charcoal when the heat got cut on facts
A triangle meant flood season, water up the stairs
A cross meant Mr. Dobbs came knocking, said he didn't care
She'd trade a chicken for a week, mark a moon beside the sum
Said debt's a language older than the tongue it come from
Taught me every symbol like a scripture she designed
Said the poor don't get contracts, so we write between the lines
Nine of us in two rooms, mattress folded like a secret
Radiator coughed at midnight, tenants prayed to keep it
She'd trace her thumb across the ink like reading Braille in the dark
Said a woman with no lawyer still can leave her mark
Landlord raised the rent in winter, called it standard practice
She raised her pen right back and coded it in matrix
Symbols nobody taught her, self-made alphabet of proof
Said the ceiling leaks in English, but survival speaks in code, tough
Chorus
Runes in the rent book, marks she made to stay alive
Every symbol on that paper kept a family alive
She never had the deed but she owned every line
Runes in the rent book, that's the only kind of sign
Verse
Twenty years later I found it boxed beneath the sink
Dust on the leather cover, ink faded but still linked
Opened to a page marked with a bird beside the date
Found out later that's the week my mother learned to skate
Past the ice outside our building where the landlord never salted
She wrote a feather for the day the water heater faulted
Every mark a memory disguised as a receipt
History nobody printed, but it's written in that sheet
I started my own ledger, kept it folded in my coat
Marked the days the check bounced, marked the days I stayed afloat
Different city, same equation, different name upon the door
Same triangle for flooding when the pipes broke on the floor
I don't need a lawyer, I got runes she left for proof
That surviving ain't a secret, it's a language with a roof
Every generation adds a symbol to the page
We ain't tenants, we're historians paying rent in every age
Chorus
Runes in the rent book, marks she made to stay alive
Every symbol on that paper kept a family alive
She never had the deed but she owned every line
Runes in the rent book, that's the only kind of sign
Bridge
Landlord never learned to read what we could always see
A whole dynasty of struggle folded quiet in the sea
Of ink and wax and worry, pressed in leather, kept alive
Every rent we ever paid left a rune to help us survive
Outro
Book still sits here on my sill, cover cracked the same
Marking every winter like she taught me, no complaint
Someday my kid will open it and ask me what it's for
I'll say that's how we made it, that's the deed to something more
