Ink under my fingernails

Ink Under My Fingernails”

Raw Southern rock / outlaw country — gravelly vocal, dry acoustic opening, full-band choruses

This old pen’s got teeth marks down along the side,

From kitchen-table wars I fought and lost inside.

It knows the names I crossed out, the ones I couldn’t say,

Every “I’m alright” I wrote to keep the hurt away.

It rode beside me through the nights that would not end,

When a blank white page was the closest thing to a friend.

Some chase a little silence where the neon burns,

I put ink to the scars that the hard road earns.

I never went looking for a wound,

But every one of ’em had something to say.

There’s ink under my fingernails,

Black on my hands from the life I’ve lived.

This pen knows the weight of the hands that shook,

The prayers I whispered where nobody looked.

I don’t write pretty, I write what’s true,

Every word’s got a little blood running through.

What tried to break me gave these pages their feel—

This pen’s seen hell, and it taught me to heal.

It wrote the empty chair and the screen door slam,

The years it took to become a better man.

It wrote a child laughing in a worn-out room,

A little bit of light cutting clean through the gloom.

It knows cold steel and the long way home,

The promises I broke when I was on my own.

But it knows a sunrise after a hard rain falls,

And truth can build a bridge from a man’s four walls.

I don’t thank the dark for where it led,

But I won’t deny what it put in my head.

There’s ink under my fingernails,

Black on my hands from the life I’ve lived.

This pen knows the weight of the hands that shook,

The prayers I whispered where nobody looked.

I don’t write pretty, I write what’s true,

Every word’s got a little blood running through.

What tried to break me gave these pages their feel—

This pen’s seen hell, and it taught me to heal.

Every scar’s got a story.

Every story needs a name.

I quit trying to outrun mine

And started putting it on the page.

I’m not proud of every mile,

But I am still standing still.

The hand that held that pen was shaking,

But it was learning how to heal.

There’s ink under my fingernails,

Fire in the truth and blood in the trail.

This pen knows the weight of the hands that shook,

The prayers I whispered where nobody looked.

I don’t write pretty, I write what’s true,

Every hard-earned line got a piece of me through.

What tried to break me gave these pages their feel—

This pen’s seen hell, and it taught me to heal.

Let these pages carry what I could not say,

Let the black ink hold what I could not throw away.

There’s ink under my fingernails—

Proof I’m still here.