Intro
Clock punches red at eleven, gate creaks and hums
Ladle glows like a second sun nobody sees
Denny lost his left eye pouring plate back in eighty-two
Said the furnace only pays you back in things you can't retrieve
Verse
Third shift bell and the floor still breathing heat
Boots stick to ash where the day crew left retreat
Clocked in half-blind, one flash burn from July
Cracked my safety glass, didn't blink, didn't ask why
Mama's rent past due, my brother's cast still fresh
Four-hundred pound ladle, I carry it like a debt
Denny taught the pour before he lost the sight
Said the eye you give up teaches you to read the light
Sparks land on my collarbone like static, stay and set
Scar's a signature, the foundry's how I sign my check
Six years on this floor, I know the furnace by its hum
Know which valve sticks, know which brother's overcome
Tired ain't a word here, it's a tax you pay in full
Overtime's the altar and the punch clock is the bull
I bow low to the pour, I don't bow to the ache
Every scar's a lesson that the fire wouldn't fake
Chorus
Traded an eye for the fire's low glow
Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know
Wisdom don't come cheap, it comes scarred and slow
Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know
Verse
Denny's cane taps concrete like he's counting out a debt
Says the young ones flinch at heat they haven't earned yet
I remember flinching too, the day the metal spit
Caught my forearm, left a river where the vein used to sit
He never called it courage, called it paying what you owe
Said the gate don't open twice for men who quit too slow
Watched him teach the pour with one good eye still sharp
Reading angles off the melt like scripture off the dark
Now the young boy on my line, hands shaking on the ladle
I tell him steady breathing beats a grip that's just unstable
Same words Denny gave me underneath the same tin roof
Same ash falling slow like snow that's carrying the proof
Twelve years since his last shift, cane still by the door
Foundry kept his name stitched into every plate we pour
I don't chase the wage no more, I chase what he left behind
A ledger made of scar tissue, a debt paid overtime
Chorus
Traded an eye for the fire's low glow
Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know
Wisdom don't come cheap, it comes scarred and slow
Odin's overtime, that's the only way I know
Bridge
They ask me why I stayed when the wage never changed
I say the gold ain't in the paycheck, it's in what the fire arranged
Every scar's a sentence in a book nobody sells
Every pour's a prayer that the old man used to tell
Outro
Gate hums shut at seven, ash settles on the floor
Denny's cane still leaning where it leaned the night before
One eye on the fire, one eye paid in full
That's the only inheritance a furnace ever pulled
