Concrete Testament (Version 4)

Intro

Delphine and Ninth, slab out front the barbershop

Poured in '99, still holds the handprints where it stopped

My initials pressed in shallow, right beside the drain

Every kid who ever lived here left a little of they name

Verse

I was nine with a stick, wet cement soft as clay

Wrote L.F. under Marcus, both of us the same age

Marcus wanted out the fast way, said the block was a cage

I told him patience is a muscle, he said patience don't pay

Watched him run for Curtis money, corner store on Delphine

Watched his sneakers get faster than the sirens could be seen

Two years later same slab, different name got laid beside mine

Chiseled deeper this time, permanent, not just a sign

That's how the block remembers, not obituaries, concrete

Every crack a small headstone for a kid who lost the heat

I kept my hands empty, kept my collar buttoned tight

Took the job at the depot, clocked in every single night

Wasn't braver than Marcus, just scared of a different kind

Scared of my momma's face if she read my name that time

So I write my rent checks like I'm paying off a debt

To a name in the sidewalk that ain't cashed a check in years yet

Chorus

Concrete testament, every name still holding ground

Block don't forget nobody, it just writes it down

Some get remembered walking, some get remembered still

Concrete testament, and the sidewalk's holding the bill

Verse

Ten years later I'm the one they ask to vouch

For young boys running product off my old front porch couch

Say I made it out, say I know the way to climb

I say the ladder that I climbed got rungs of borrowed time

Told Reggie's nephew put the stick down, learn the trade

Watched him nod like Marcus nodded, watched the choice get made

Anyway he wrote his name up under mine last spring

Small and shaky, first time trying, didn't mean a thing

Until the second letter got added, deeper, dark, and full

His momma poured a candle where the writing used to pull

I stopped walking that way home, took the long route round the block

Guilt's a kind of weather that don't care what door you lock

But loyalty ain't standing still while somebody else's gone

It's coming back to teach the next one how the story's drawn

So I bring my folding chair, sit out front the barbershop

Teaching kids the alphabet don't have to be the block

Chorus

Concrete testament, every name still holding ground

Block don't forget nobody, it just writes it down

Some get remembered walking, some get remembered still

Concrete testament, and the sidewalk's holding the bill

Bridge

Odell says the city's gonna repave it come July

Pour it fresh, erase the names, call it fixing drainage lines

Let 'em pour it, I got every letter memorized

Marcus, Reggie's nephew, mine, still living in my eyes

Concrete cracks eventually, but memory don't break

Ain't no contractor smoothing over what a name can make

Outro

Delphine and Ninth, new sidewalk, smooth and gray and blind

But I still walk it slow like the names is still behind