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Eat For Two Lyrics

O, Baby blankets and baby shoes, baby slippers, baby spoons, walls of baby blue.
Dream child in my head is a nightmare born in a borrowed bed.
Now I know lightning strikes again.
It struck me once, then struck me dead.
My folly grows inside of me.
I eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now.

Well, the egg man fell down off his shelf.
All the good king's men with all their help struggled 'til the end for a shell they couldn't mend.
You know where this will lead, to hush and rock in the nursery for the kicking one inside of me.
I eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now.

When the boy was a boy, the girl was a girl, they found each other in a wicked world.
Strong in some respects, but she couldn't stand for the way he begged and gave in.
Pride is for men; young girls should run and hide instead.
Risk the game by taking dares with "yes".
Eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now.

Walk for two? I'm stumbling.
Breathe for two? I can't breathe.
Five months , how it grows.
Five months now, I begin to show.
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Cover art for Eat For Two lyrics by 10,000 Maniacs

This seems to be about a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. She was pressured into sex and ended up pregnant and, presumably, alone. This isn't the way she imagined it; instead of a "dream child" she has "a nightmare born in a borrowed bed."

Cover art for Eat For Two lyrics by 10,000 Maniacs

This dramatizes very cleverly and simply, several related things... the issue that was big at the time, teen pregnancy (which in and of itself is always a really big issue for society and for those who experience it), the idea of having trouble finding your place in life (which is hard at various times in life, a big one being when one is a teenager), the idea of being hit with a very tough situation all of the sudden which results from simply wanting to having fun and induldge in experience and being somewhat burned by it, and the concept of going from being responsible for yourself (which can be hard enough) to having a child who will be dependant upon you. I think it is instictual to want to take care of something, it is built in. The experience is one of shock, followed by either a fight or flight. If you fight, I think you will win in the end because it will be the way you find your true character and true self.. when you 'eat for two'. If you've been there, then you know.......

Cover art for Eat For Two lyrics by 10,000 Maniacs

REM did the male perspective answer to this on the track "Me In Honey" from the Out of Time album.

Cover art for Eat For Two lyrics by 10,000 Maniacs

A young woman is pregnant. Baby is a "surprise" and her partner blew town, leaving the lady to raise the little cutie as a single mom, and she doesn't know what to make of that

Cover art for Eat For Two lyrics by 10,000 Maniacs

Any ideas about the lightning-strikes-twice reference and "borrowed bed" in the first verse?

My guess is Once for loosing her virginity and its associated bliss. The second time is pregnancy and he second strike (pregnancy) strikes her dead.

I think "borrowed bed" refers to any bed that was not her own. Perhaps the sex occurred somewhere other than the bed in her home. As for "lightning strikes twice", I think it means that she thought getting pregnant alone (strike one) was the worst thing to happen, but now reality has hit about how hard it is to actually raise a baby (strike two).

@picturesofthesun he came in her, and later he will come out of her (the baby, being half her, half him). The bed being her life, borrowed because it’s not even her own life, yet.