
Sing this song → MARCUS CREED opened it for karaoke: their instrumental, their lyrics on a clock. Premium sings; everyone listens and votes.
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(mail call) (say the name)
Write me back! (write!) I'ma answer! (always!)
Forty-one letters on my table from the hallways
Write me back! (write!) Every one! (every!)
A stamp ain't but some change. The silence cost you heavy.
Mail call! (mail call!) Hear your name! (say it!)
Ain't no feelin' like it. I remember. So I pay it.
Six years, no mail. C.O. reads the names off at the rail
I stood there anyway. Every day. Like I might be on the scale.
You learn the sound of everybody's name but yours. It's a song.
"Alvarez. Bates. Coleman." Skip. "Dixon." I stood there that long.
Year seven. "Creed." I ain't move. He said it twice. Dude next to me
Pushed me. Envelope with stickers on it. Keisha. She was three
When I went in. Ten now. Crayon on the back, a dog, brown spots
We never had a dog. She wrote "this is the dog we gon' get." That's what I got.
Read it forty times before lights out. Put it in my sock.
Started doin' pushups the next mornin'. Started watchin' the clock.
Write me back! (write!) I'ma answer! (always!)
Forty-one letters on my table from the hallways
Write me back! (write!) Every one! (every!)
A stamp ain't but some change. The silence cost you heavy.
P.O. box on Compton Ave. Key on the ring with the truck's
Sundays, kitchen table, readin' glasses, legal pad, two cups
My wife sets the coffee down and don't say nothin'. Knows where I'm at.
D'Andre, nineteen, doin' twelve. Asked me "how you do it?" I wrote back:
"Don't count days. Count books. Count pushups. Count who wrote.
Don't borrow nothin' you can't pay by Friday. Learn one word a day. Take notes.
The first two years are loud. Then it gets quiet. Use the quiet.
And write your mama even when it's nothin' to say. 'Specially then. Try it."
Four pages. Always four. 'Cause I know what two feels like
Two feels like somebody's busy. Four means "I had time. You're worth the light."
Dear Marcus... (I'm readin')
Dear D'Andre... (I'm writin')
We got the dog, by the way. Brown spots.
(WRITE ME BACK!)
Write me back! (write!) I'ma answer! (always!)
Forty-one letters on my table from the hallways
Write me back! (write!) Every one! (every!)
A stamp ain't but some change. The silence cost you heavy.
Mail call! (mail call!) Hear your name! (say it!)
D'Andre got his GED in March. Sent me the paper. It's framed. I paid it.
Raised in Watts, four blocks from the Towers. Read like a fifth grader at nineteen, then learned properly off a prison library cart: two books a week for eleven years, and his own appeal filed in blue pen. Runs a free book table on 103rd and a tile crew of men who came home. Speaks for the people nobody sees.