[Verse 1]
Five years today
Same church sign, same highway
Red roses on a rusted gate
Your name carved in that gray slate
Pulled up slow
Engine humming like a tired ghost
Rearview full of what I lost
Front seat full of empty thoughts
Mama keeps askin’ if I’m eatin’
Daddy says I should stop drinkin’
I just trace your little handprint
On the window, still there, faint and bent
[Chorus]
Dear daughter
What is to become of me now
Dear daughter
Who am I in this hollow house
All these what-ifs drown me
Every mile, every memory
Dear daughter
What could we have been, you and me
[Verse 2]
Would you hate math
Love old trucks, or talk back
Sneak that lipstick in your backpack
Roll your eyes at my old tracks
First heartbreak
Would you slam doors, stay awake
Call me cryin’, say he’s fake
I’d say, “Baby, hearts bend, they don’t break”
I see your shoes by the front door
They don’t fit you anymore
You stayed four, world moved on
But in my mind you still grow strong
[Chorus]
Dear daughter
What is to become of me now
Dear daughter
Who am I in this hollow house
All these what-ifs drown me
Every mile, every memory
Dear daughter
What could we have been, you and me
[Bridge]
If I’d left five minutes later
If the sky had held back rain
If the light had stayed on red
Would I still know this kind of pain
If you’d made it to December
Would we fight about your curfew time
Would I still be this broken
Or just some other shape of tired
[Chorus]
Dear daughter
What is to become of me now
Dear daughter
I keep calling out somehow
All these what-ifs haunt me
Like a song stuck on repeat
Dear daughter
You’re the road I never reach
[Outro]
[Spoken word – Daughter’s voice, soft, musical]
(Young Female Vocalist):
"Mama
You keep asking what is to become of you
Look at your hands
They still fold in prayer, even when you’re mad at heaven
You think I stayed on that dark road
But I learned to run on light
You think you lost me in that moment
But I slipped into every sunrise you don’t bother to watch
Mama
You wonder what I’d be
I am your stubborn, your mercy
Your laugh when you don’t mean to
Your voice when you sing in the kitchen alone
Stop living in the crash
Live in the love that drove you there
I am not in the sirens
I am in the quiet after, when you finally breathe"
[Positive and optimistic tone]
(Young Female Vocalist):
"Dear mama
What is to become of you now
You become the woman who survived
You become the story that helps someone else drive slow"
(Young Female Vocalist):
You keep writing, “Dear daughter”
So I’m writing back in your heart
I never left the passenger seat
I just moved a little closer to where you can’t see
(Young Female Vocalist):
[softly, fading]
Dear mama
I am okay
Becoming
Is still for you too