Ode à la Feuille de Dessiccateur

A dryer sheet just fell out of my sweater and landed on my leg. Really, just now--like a mysterious artifact from the past, a witness to secrets and stories, history in the making. One can only imagine if it had fallen into anyone else’s lap: in as much time it would have ended up in the trash can. But it surreptitiously, serendipitously fell into MY lap! What providence! I understand your worth, O Dryer Sheet--I instantly realized your beauty. So I give you your rightful place of honor in the world of art and literature, my virtually static-free Muse, distinguished from all other dryer sheets with prose.

Your moonlight fibers are fragile as flakes of snow, yet woven together like breezy gossamer, the whole is strong enough to bear repeated exposure to water and heat and wind. It is soft as cotton, and wonderfully, beautifully, divinely clean. How long have you been clinging to the inside of my sweater, I wonder? To where have you traveled? What great adventures did you experience in the secret world between the inside of my sweater and the outside of the shirt underneath my sweater? O messenger between this world and that, where have my socks gone?

Alas, we shall never come to know the secrets of the Dryer Sheet, for it cannot talk or write or sing or even dance. It is too old, perhaps even dead. But it will live on through these words as a beacon of inspiration, a reminder of the meadowy freshness that hides away in places we never think to look, waiting to reveal itself when we need it most.