The table cluttered and crowded with stuff, in the now empty home,
Each item had a story and together, made enough pages to fill a tome,
But on the floor all by itself was a lock of hair in her tarnished pewter comb.

The fine dust coated all, as no one was left to brush the dirt under the rug now stolen,
The wall-paper curled down from the ceiling, in disrepair, "oh how the mighty had fallen",
Was scripted in red lipstick, on a mirror faded and cracked and aged, not gilded but sullen.

Emptiness filled and all that was left,
No treasure, the present was bereft,
Four decades of waste and theft,
Then a grey hand reached and caressed,
The tarnished pewter comb, the lock of hair left,
While a voice saying quietly, "it was for the best."