Grandma's laundry basket

Grandma's laundry basket,

pulled from the shed's dark gut.

It stood for years, holding clean clothes,

then dirty ones, then nothing but

cobwebs and dust, and now it shows

its age, a gaping wound along one side,

the wicker strands all loose and dry.

A hundred tiny splinters hide

in the weave, a place where things would lie

and wait, and now they just divide.

The shape still holds, mostly, a memory

of purpose, but the tight-knit lines

are broken, freed from slavery

to form, just scattered signs

of what it was, for all to see.

The dust is thick, a blanket gray,

covering the unraveling.

I poke a finger through the fray.

Some things just can't keep clinging.

It's just decay, day after day.