[Verse 1]
Walked out the gate with a plastic sack
Twenty years gone
Stamped on a file
State boots
Sore feet
Bus seat in back
Window full of rust and power lines
Night classes
Cheap coffee
Used books
Name on a screen that didn’t stutter “inmate”
Cap and gown over borrowed dress shoes
Shaking when they said it
Like the word “graduate”
[Chorus]
Shovel and a suit
Stains on my hands
Tie on my throat
Started in the yard
Picking up what they left
Tell myself
“Son
You’re still blessed”
Every bad day I repeat it like truth
Shovel and a suit
[Verse 2]
Graveyard shift by the dry-docked hulls
Cold rain
Hot breath
Steel on skin
Foreman barking numbers from a clipboard throne
I just kept my head down
Kept clocking in
Met her hauling paint cans to the line
Laugh that cut straight through the grinding air
She saw the old chain marks on my wrists one time
Said
“You ain’t your story
You’re standing here”
[Chorus]
Shovel and a suit
Rent due
Heart due
Late again
She kissed my jaw
Said
“Baby
We’ll get through”
Held my face like it was brand-new
Every dark year shrinking in the rear-view
Shovel and a suit
[Bridge]
Got a porch with a swing that leans
Secondhand couch
Two chipped plates
Her keys in a bowl by the door each night
That’s how I know I stayed
Sometimes I wake up to the sound of the count
Numbers rolling down a cinderblock hall
She pulls me back
Hand on my chest
Says
“Hear it? It’s just the heat in the walls”
[Chorus]
Shovel and a suit
Little yard full of stubborn blooms
Dog tracks dirt on the kitchen floor
She laughs
Says
“Leave it
That’s what it’s for”
Every lost year turning into new roots
Shovel and a suit