Purple Prose (because I've been awake for too long)

Consider the lowly dryer sheet. It exists not for itself, but for us and our selfish desires.

We place the laundry sheet atop our sodden clothing, expecting it to lay down its life that we may be spared the agony and anguish of rough fabric against our fragile skin. It spins with our vestments, dancing among the socks, frolicking here through a collar, there through a trouser leg, bestowing softness upon all it encounters.

The dryer sheet asks for nothing. It knows not of the world beyond the laundry room. It will never know the joy of a summer's evening, or the music of the silence of a snow-covered day. No, its fate is grimmer.

As we pull our now-freshened garments from the dryer, we pay little heed to the noble dryer sheet, now spent and lifeless. Its purpose has been fulfilled, its usefulness expended. And so we dispose of it, throwing its desiccated husk into the garbage, there to languish with the lint trap scrapings and empty detergent boxes.

Weep for the dryer sheet. Weep for its sacrifice. For few else will.