[Verse 1] From Aachen south through Frankfurt's morning grey, She dragged her bags and helped two strangers find their train, Then calmed a nervous man who'd never flown this way, And heard Colombian voices call her home again. [Pre-Chorus] At customs she breathed carefully, Passport held too tight, Then saw both parents waiting there Beyond the airport light. [Chorus — Variant 1] How is father? Carolina asks. The answer comes in halves. He hides it well, her mother says, But something in him cracks. [Verse 2] Beneath the sun on Suba's winding plain, Her nana blessed, her grandpa cursed the cold, While tennis talk kept circling the refrain Of things the family left deliberately untold. [Pre-Chorus] She moved from chair to chair that day, Too young for what she heard, Yet old enough to recognize The tension past each word. [Chorus — Variant 2] How is father? Carolina wonders. An aunt avoids her eyes. The rumors drift like cigarette smoke Across a summer sky. [Verse 3] She walked her old barrio block by block, Met school friends over tinto in the afternoon, And let the city set her like a clock Before the lunch that came too soon. [Pre-Chorus] He ordered for them both with ease, She stayed on safer ground, Then Nicolás drove toward the airport Without making a sound. [Chorus — Variant 3] How is father? Carolina wonders. He laughs, he seems the same. She lets him think she isn't counting Every shift and change. [Bridge] Backstage in Medellín she saw her — tall, unhurried, effortless and bright. The way her father said her name was different in the light. Not like the others. Something steadier. Carolina filed it quietly away, Then shared a forty-minute flight to Bogotá and didn't know quite what to say. [Verse 4] He wrote the truth in margins, didn't speak, She pulled her jacket closed against the room, Then in the car he said what she had tried to seek And left her standing in the afternoon. [Pre-Chorus] In Aachen weeks later he came, Sophie somewhere nearby. She used the formal usted still — not ready to say why. [Chorus — Variant 4] How is father? Carolina wonders. She knows a little more. The truth arrived in too small a space And left her at the door. [Outro] To forgive is not to forget, to love is not to know, she carries what she can of him wherever she will go.
