I marveled at the choices you made
of what to bring from your old life to the new, 
but no thing intrigued me more
than that old, cylindrical, nylon hamper,
it’s opening round and gaping, 
flat on the floor in your closet,
waiting to grow with
your dirty socks
and boxers,
your pants and shirts,
long-sleeved
and short.
Feed me, it yawned,
week after week, and you did,
and it grew ever upward
until it bulged to overflowing, holding,
only to be emptied
to be filled again,

just as it had for daughter number one
and again for daughter number two
during their college years. And you said
you were not nostalgic and yet,
you snagged it from your old home
and brought it to your new, where
it took turns in our utility room
with three, dull-white, plastic laundry baskets,
which I also salvaged from a former life.

Last week you announced it was time
to let it go, the tip of its metal coils were
poking through its nylon flesh, its inner
coming outer, beginning its collapse,
which in an act of clear determination,
you decided to hasten 
by cutting its framework free.

And it sprung!

                                To life!

Nylon

         splitting,
   
                          tearing,                     giving

coil
               unwinding

                                       stretching                     
      freeing

a contemporary sculpture, 
uncoiled, askew,
nestled in a pool of blue.

“What shall we call it?” I asked, giddy.

“Unhampered,” you said.  

And if could, I would
marry you again.