[Intro]
[sparse prepared piano, single struck note, dust]
Open me. My spine still holds.
Ink outlives the hand that wrote.

[Verse 1]
I am the book they keep the count in.
Every sum received, a sum removed —
a credit here means debit yonder,
that is the only law I prove.
I do not weigh. I do not pardon.
I hold the line, and hold it true.

[Chorus]
You can pay me. You can't close me.
A number lands — the page stays wide.
Closing is a word, not a total;
that word is yours. I don't decide.

[Verse 2]
The first great entry ran it backwards:
when the chains came off in thirty-three,
the coin flowed up to those who'd owned them —
the loss was theirs, the law agreed.
Living hands still cleared that balance;
the final instalment: twenty-fifteen.

[Chorus]
You can pay me. You can't close me.
A number lands — the page stays wide.
Closing is a word, not a total;
that word is yours. I don't decide.

[Bridge]
[bowed strings enter, cold]
Then the counter-claim, arriving later —
a second book, a coloured map,
green for lend and red for hazard,
the grade outlived the hand that drew it.
Not who did wrong. Just who is holding.

[Spoken Word]
[strings thin to a drone, voice dry, forensic]
Understand what I am and am not. I do not record guilt — guilt dies with the body. I record possession: who came away holding, and how much. The hand that signs me now is new. The name at the head of the page is old. That is not a contradiction. That is how a debt survives its debtor. You inherit no sin. You inherit the balance.

[Instrumental Break]
[prepared piano returns, sparse, unresolved]

[Verse 3]
Ask me whether paying ends it.
I have no last page to reach.
Settle — and still the ink keeps settling;
the next to come has signed to nothing.
Finality's a thing you bargain,
a place you both decide to stop.

[Final Chorus]
[fuller, voice doubled]
You can pay me. You can't close me.
The sum is real; the seal is not.
I keep the count until you tell me
the counting's done. I never thought it was.

[Outro]
[piano thins to one note, drone beneath]
Open still. The pen is warm.
No hand has written: paid in full.

[Fade Out]