Two Nice Girls Eleven
(Kathy Korniloff) Eleven years old when Janis Joplin died It was a time in her life full of feminine pride A Wrinkle in Time and The Wind in the Willows Hiding behind the summer clothes that billowed On the line With a head full of music and playful heart With her two best friends you couldn't tear them apart Reading notes and measures and Harriet the Spy King of the mountain and a big blue sky So open wide Running like a girl You go sailing past my window chased by tracers of the sun Running like a girl Meet me in the underbrush remember solid ground we touched In our forested fortresses Growing up fast on the edge of a storm There was a peace to keep, a job to perform Learning well how to settle into so polite Quietly there by a TV light So close inside Proud and stoic with a sense of duty No one there to notice her developing beauty if they could have listened there was no mistaking The dissonent sound of a young heart breaking Open wide Watching girlfriends lining up one by one To pledge allegiance to the women they would soon become They all quit sports and got a D in math And you began to follow a narrow path Once open wide Running like a girl You go sailing past my window blazing trails against the wind Out into this world Finding out about your difference I will give you love's assistance Now that I am aware of you I was stranded outside and I couldn't speak Needed a soothing brain balm just to get through the week I was feeling amputated from my neck to my shoes And the gulf between my voice and my heart was ooh So far and wide When I woke from this dream I was thinking of you How you've always known just what to do With your skinny brown legs and your face to the sun Nothing you've known has ever come undone Heart open wide Running like a girl Tearing up my neighborhood under a big blue sky Running like a girl Meet me in the underbrush remember solid ground we touched