The Girls.

There is a girl.

A girl who reads tiny canvas-bound novellas with the same sense of 

satisfaction you'd get from 

smoking the thinnest of Capri cigarettes in the sun. 

A girl who once whiled her time away on patios, surrounded by friends and wine and sunsets and brunches.
She'd spend her last twelve dollars til payday on a glass of wine plus tip.
Overdressed, she kissed boys, wore in her hair intricate braids, often with a flower tucked behind her ear.
These were the things, she felt, that defined her.
She knew most of those who walked past her on the patio, but paid little attention.
She knew coffee shop owners and restaurant chefs, she often felt as though she knew everyone.
She used to wonder what the person she would eventually fall in love with was doing at that exact same moment as she was sitting on a wicker chair on the sunny side of a patio.
She wanted love so badly, but knew not where to look for it.
Though, she felt like she knew exactly what she was looking for.

There were other girls; girls all dancing on the tips of the same waveless ocean, all living within a skipping distance of one another, all doing the same to some degree or another.
Wanting love, finding love, fighting love.
With carefully applied mascara, and high high heels, they all lived out their terrarium lives as satellites to one another, summer after summer.
Summer girls.
Patio girls.
Girls with Flowers in Their Hair Girls. 
Walking the same streets, knowing the same people, drinking the same wines.

The Girl, the First Girl, when she finally left the patios, when she finally found the love she was looking for, she found herself in a new world, a very different world.
No more skipping distance, no more ocean.
Though, her world was always a world of Flowers and of Books, it now included of Loved and of Home too.
No longer did it include tinny songs playing out of a tiny radio, or half hungover days off two dollar wine.
No more No Bathtub. No more No Couch. No more, I've Got To Get Out Of Here while fearing she never would.

No more, What is he doing though I don't know him yets.
Now there are far fewer patios, & none that well worn or particularly familiar. Her closet is still filled with beautiful dresses, though now she has far fewer places to wear them. Overdressed is a rarity now, but occasions to do so are usually filled with more meaning than just 'Saturday'.
A new world where she was still at the center, but with far fewer satellites.

The other girls left that Tiny Town too; some physically moved away, some just simply moved on.
One got married. One moved to the mountains. Two moved to another beach town up the way, to an ocean with waves. One dove headfirst into a job that took her off the patios and off to Chicago on a whim.

So, no longer did they all dance with their toes dipped into the same foam of their waveless ocean, no longer did they orbit the Girl; all pulled together by the gravity of a small town with one sunny main street.

Because you see, all the girls, they all grew up.