There they hang, row on row, a sleek army awaiting duty. Naked now, but not for long as they wait to don their burdens, shoulders bending under the weight of dresses, suits, and sweaters. Each hook grips tenaciously to the bar, suspending its work in the air like heavy mist, its triangular bottom making the best use of the slender metal that forms it. Even the hangers with entirely quixotic contents bear them proudly (and more easily) and yet each one and all together seem entirely exanimate. Showing only their scrupulous natures, they hang through the stillness of the night and the activity of a burden being suddenly released.

  All appears well until then, when a few barbaric deserters have the atrocious gall to drop their burdens on the floor in a sudden burst of spirit and a mockery of all that they exist for, forcing their comrades to, while at attention still, somehow accommodate continue to accommodate their squirming loads. This stalwart behavior, they know, will be rewarded later when their burdens are removed the correct way, and for a party or something spectacular of the sort, instead of only to be washed as the ones on the floor must now be, or else shoved carelessly back on their soldiers in an off-balance manner.

  These apocryphal idea of grandeur have no one to denounce them, no one to set them straight on the simple course that has been plotted. March, march, not through space but through time and as yet fictitious wear, and yet as fictitious chronicals of great historical plunders wear on, they grow old and stooped with weight. But for now they hang in straight neat rows, all decked in finest garb; orderly as books on a shelf they solute their own solitude and strength with patience against time.