Intro
Salt air and iodine, the smell that raised me up
Daddy's ribs like braille, healed wrong but held enough
He'd trace the ridges slow and call it his own tongue
Said every break's a letter for the ones who come
Verse
Forty years on the pier where the cranes don't forgive
Cable snapped one Tuesday, caught him where the ribs live
Doctor set it crooked, said the bone would learn to bend
He said pain's just a language and he's fluent till the end
Called the left side warning, said it clicked before the storm
Called the right side ledger, kept the debts he'd sworn
Wore his shirt unbuttoned so the young boys on the dock
Could read the crooked scripture written in his rib-cage lock
Never took a settlement, never sued the company
Said the mark was worth more than the money they'd guarantee
Taught me how to breathe through a break without a sound
Said the strongest men don't scream, they just go underground
Watched him load a barge with a fever and a limp
Sweat like scripture dripping off a body built on flint
Thirty winters passed before the cough took him below
Left his rib cage open like a book I had to know
Hook
Every scar's a rune carved into the rib
Read the marks right, learn the way the old man lived
Ash on the collarbone, iron in the plate
Some men wear their history, some just count the weight
Verse
Sixteen when the block wrote its first line on my skin
Curb caught my eyebrow, taught me where the fights begin
Kept it stitched with thread I bought from the corner store
Told the nurse I fell, she'd heard that lie before
Nineteen took a graze that clipped me off the shoulder blade
Called it my apprenticeship, the tuition that I paid
Twenty-three the winter that I slept behind the gate
Frost wrote its own rune on my knuckle, called it fate
Started reading bodies like my father read the tide
Every limp a chapter, every squint a thing to hide
Learned to spot the liars by the scars they never earned
Store-bought toughness fades but the real ones stay concerned
Kept his coat, still smells like diesel and the dock
Wear it when it's cold enough to make the old wounds talk
Rib cage is a ledger now, mine's stacking up the same
Different pier, same water, still answer to his name
Hook
Every scar's a rune carved into the rib
Read the marks right, learn the way the old man lived
Ash on the collarbone, iron in the plate
Some men wear their history, some just count the weight
Bridge
Told my son the same thing when he split his lip in June
Said don't cry over ink, boy, you just wrote your first rune
Asked me what it means when the old scars start to itch
Said that's just the weather asking who's the better man
Every generation adds a line to the same page
Rib cage gets more crowded but it never shows its age
Outro
Salt air and iodine still linger where I stand
Rib cage full of runes nobody else can understand
Bury me with the coat on, let the diesel keep it whole
Every mark I'm leaving is a map back to my soul
