Girls departing
in silver-grey Merc-Benz cars, sometimes chubby Ambassadors, white and solid.
A rented vehicle maybe, a scarlet red Hyundai, sometimes.
Or a flashy Porsche, bedecked in flowers and streamers,
A shiny convertible?

(No, it’s never that kind of fun for us.)

We leave behind our mothers and dads and younger siblings
As they step into other vehicles.
I sit in mine, surrounded by strangers, one of them more familiar than the others.

I look back, the cars have left already.

I am on my own
In a car that’s all new, with a family that’s all new.

Girls depart to new homes, bearing new names and identities,
New clothes, old jewelry, new ideas, old theories.