Mismatch Marty "sock monster"

I’m the hum in the night, that low slow drone, The heat in the drum where your hopes get thrown. You think it’s just laundry — nah, it’s my feast, I’m the shadow, the hiss, the mechanical beast. I feed on the weak, the small, the stray, Little lost fabrics that wander my way. You drop one sock, but I crave them both, A toll for your warmth, a debt for your growth. I wait in the dark where the buttons clatter, The dryer light flickers, a pulse — then it shatters. I breathe static storms and the scent of lint, My maw turns cotton to ash and flint. I was born where the hum and the hiss combined, In a tangle of wires, old grief, and grime. The first pair I took? A child’s bright pink — Ever since then, I’ve lived on the brink. They call it “the mystery” — oh please, that name, I’m the legend that hides inside your mundane. A ritual sacrifice with every load, I gorge on your chaos to lighten your load. See, mortals forget — but machines, we remember. Your heat feeds my hunger, my coils burn ember. You turn that dial, you start my heart, But when the buzzer screams — that’s my art. I stack my trophies in the vents below, A kingdom of threads where the castoffs go. Mismatched, torn, their colors decay, And I rule their realm where the lights never stay. Down in the lint-trap, I’m weaving a throne, From threads of the lives you think you outgrown. The baby-blue booties, the hospital socks, The stains from the nights you don’t dare to unlock. I know every footprint you’ve pressed in your soles, I taste every secret that bleeds through the holes. Perfume and pavement, cheap bars and rain, I spin them to ropes and I knot them in pain. I’ve swallowed the stockings of runaway brides, The work-worn wool from your double shifts’ strides. The slipper a patient kicked off in the ward, It thumped in my drum like a muffled last word. I chew on the socks of the ones who don’t wake, Their pairs keep on waiting — a cruel little ache. You sort, you fold, you call out their name, And blame your own mind when they don’t answer the game. So fold your clothes and whisper your prayers, Pretend I don’t lurk in the steel and airs. Each spin’s a sermon, each load’s a sin, And I’ll drag one more sock to my lair again. And when all your drawers hold is ragged despair, When every last pair’s just a ghost of a pair, You’ll lean in to listen, to beg or implore — That’s when I’ll hiss, “I’ve been here before.” For I am the gap you can’t ever explain, The slow, tumbling chorus that drowns out your brain. You think it’s just laundry, a cycle, a chore… But I’m counting your footsteps — and I’m always one more.