Biological Girl

Lyrics

[Intro]
Marian, November 11, 1926, your hands on the microtome.
Slicing through the cortex, purple stains blooming.

[Verse 1]
In that Berkeley lab, 1965, 10 PM,
The formalin bites the air, sharp as your coffee, black and endless.
You turn the wheel, the blade whispers against tissue,
Rat brains yielding their secrets, thicker cortices from enriched cages.
Daphna, in Tel Aviv, 2015, your mosaic unfolds,
No male, no female, just patterns pieced together.

[Chorus]
Biological girl, I speak to you through the hatbox,
The preserved folds you carried on planes, a lecture prop.
Not rigid, you said, the brain changes with touch,
With environment, experience, like sand leaking from Dalí's hourglass.
Marian, at 39, you proved it, the plasticity.

[Verse 2]
Cool air at 68 degrees, MRI hums in the background,
Electrodes mapping the mosaic, features scattered.
No pure form, Daphna whispers over the intercom,
A brain of fragments, some more common here or there.
Your assistants, unnamed women in white coats,
Feeding rats, logging data under dim lamps.

[Bridge]
What was missing, those personal stories,
The gender identities blurred in anonymized scans.
You carried the brain like a secret, Marian,
Demystifying in lecture halls, July 25, 2017, you left us the blueprint.

[Verse 3]
The microtome's edge, precise as your quote,
Structural basis, but flexible, like nerves rewiring.
Biological girl, addressing you now,
In the twilight of thought, gold and blue pulses.

[Chorus]
Biological girl, I speak to you through the hatbox,
The preserved folds you carried on planes, a lecture prop.
Not rigid, you said, the brain changes with touch,
With environment, experience, like sand leaking from Dalí's hourglass.
Marian, at 39, you proved it, the plasticity.

[Outro]
Daphna's voice echoes, no such thing as male or female,
Just the mosaic, resilient, ever-shifting.