Where do the Missing Socks Go?

I was once part of something. A matched set, a twin heartbeat
in the rhythm of morning. Folded warm beside my other half,
belonging without question.

But now I live in the quiet places.
Beneath the hum of machines.
Behind drawers half-closed.
In the silence, no one notices.

No one looks here.
No one thinks to check
the shadows where things slip through.

They keep moving, putting on newer, brighter things… whole things.

And I, threadbare and thinned, have come undone in corners
where the light doesn’t reach.
Still soft, but fraying.

I used to be chosen. I used to be needed.
Now I’m a mystery half-heartedly searched for then replaced.

I hear them laugh about socks that vanish.
How silly, they say, “Where could it have gone?”
But no one ever really looks for what is lost.

I am the thing that’s missing, but never mourned.
A little life left behind by accident, then memory, then everything.

Still, I wait. I stay quiet, because that’s what I’ve learned to be.

Invisible. Forgotten. But real.

And if someday, a hand brushes past the dust and finds me… creases and all…

I hope they hold me gently.

I hope they remember that even lost things
once had purpose.