Block Arithmetic

Intro

Corner store calculator missing the nine

Cashier taps it twice, says close enough is fine

That's how we learned to count, close enough to survive

Every number on this block already half a lie

Verse

Nine years old splitting bus fare three ways with my cousins

Two quarters short, we walked it, called that budgeting a dozen

Mama's check divided by the days left in the month

Sometimes the answer's negative, she still fed us at once

Learned to add the hustle 'fore I learned to add fractions

Corner boys taught percentages faster than the classroom actions

Ten percent for lookout, twenty if it's raining

Math on wet concrete, nobody's explaining

Watched my uncle's ledger, chicken scratch composition book

Every name he crossed out, another debt he shook

Subtraction hit different when it's people, not the cash

Column got shorter every winter, funerals came fast

I kept my own numbers, taped inside the closet door

Days clean, days working, days I ain't sure what for

Sum of all my choices never balanced like it should

But the block don't grade on paper, only if you're understood

Chorus

Add the hustle, subtract the name

Carry the weight, it never changes

Multiply the nights we came up short

That's block arithmetic, same math, same court

Verse

County phone give fifteen minutes, split it three-way call

Mama, sister, shorty, watch the seconds stall

New page in the ledger, now the count is days

Counted cinderblocks like interest that still stays

Canteen math is fractions, ramen the exchange rate

Traded snacks for stamps, wrote letters, learned to wait

Yard got its own geometry, angles keep you safe

Triangulate the blind spots, that's the only faith

Kept my numbers small so the count don't read the code

Every tally mark another mile down that road

Came home to the same block, same corner, same scale

Except now I add up mornings, not the time I did in jail

Sister graduated, added that up like a win

Subtracted three old faces that ain't never coming back again

Still the