A Heap of Clothes

A messy tangle of weak tea tights,
like washed up seaweed on the shore;
belonging to she who doesn't care,
who doesn't give a damn anymore.
And other sorts of underwear,
in various stages of decay,
lying, tattered on the table top.
Tired jumpers, not put away
enfold in limp and twisted arms
skirts and blouses, bluey-grey,
a heap of garments whose strange charms,
once caught my heart and made me pay,
a price for an imagined day,
when I would wear them happily.
Their creases now, and scrumpledness,
their too big, too small uselessness,
pay homage to my vanity,
pay homage to my laziness,
and to the fantasy whose endlessness
in the shape of some new dress,
is sadly, really nothing less
than the will to carry on.