it was always a frightening game to me
the waiting
i guess the waiting was the hardest part
never knew whether the soft thumps that bounced
around my ears
were the footsteps of the approaching seeker or my neurotic heartbeat
i used to have a heart murmur
like the last ominous ticks before an alarm
before everything has to change
we used to play in the labyrinth of gates and aluminum siding
the dry dirt of pseudo suburbia
that'd give a little black girl ashy white knees
and make her hair kink up right after it was pressed
so she'd look less like cinderella
and more like chaka khan
which all in all she realized
20 years too late
that might not have been such a bad thing
bein' the amazon of the playground
runnin' wild and free
like diana ross takin' it easy
but instead she packed it up
took her act on the road
and somewhere between vinyl and cd rom
the magic was lost and artificial
if it was ever there to begin with
so she slips on her technicolor dreamcoat
and pretends to be
what she could have been
as she waits for the falling footsteps
to take her magical woven dreams
and scream out tag
you're it.
