A Valuer's Scrawl

[Verse 1]
The silver locket on the Cheapside counter felt cold,
Her grandma's thumbprint worn into the rose-gold clasp.
Half-past four on a Thursday, the story's told
By the rain on the glass, a weak and patient rasp.

[Chorus]
And that's the weight of it, a valuer's scrawl,
The way a life gets measured by the gram.
A love compressed to nothing, after all,
And less than what the broken boiler demands.

[Verse 2]
He watches Liam's jaw go tight, a fault
Revealed inside the tired, familiar stone.
"Thirty quid," the man says, through a yawn of salt-
and-vinegar crisps, and glances at his phone.

[Chorus]
And that's the weight of it, a valuer's scrawl,
The way a life gets measured by the gram.
A memory folded up and getting small,
For winter heat the landlord understands.

[Bridge]
He remembers the chalk dust on her hands that June,
Up on the Tor, beneath a pale sky.
She'd held it up, a tiny silver moon,
And promised him she'd wear it 'til she died.

[Chorus]
And that's the weight of us, no scrawl at all,
Just how a life gets measured by the giving.
Not what you lose when your whole back's to the wall,
But what you keep to prove that you're still living.

[Outro]
He takes her hand, the palm still tastes of chalk.
The Cheapside traffic hums a single chord.