we decided to face our abandonment and do something about it.

Granted, we were oversize & already long in the tooth, but not entirely at fault,
at least for getting old.  Time & again you would approach the two of us, as if
to assess our potential to light up your evening meal in a savory soup or roasted

in a 425˚ oven.  Obviously not aware that sweet potatoes are hypersensitive
creatures, you couldn’t know that your oft-repeated remark, ‘the thought doesn’t
do a thing for me’ — as you put us back in the hand-thrown bowl with its earthy
glaze job — would haunt us the whole time you were away.

So while you were gone & the kid next door came every day to take care of the 
cats, administer prednisone to the one with bronchitis, empty the litter box, keep
the bird feeders filled & goldfish fed – ignoring us, of course – the situation really

got under our skin & late one night, to progressive jazz on the the classical music
station, we sprouted.  In tandem, pace Rilke, four pale green spears thrust up in 
the dark, leaning ever so slightly toward each other.  When morning came we
altered our angle in order to soak up light from the kitchen window.

When you finally returned you greeted our accomplishment with astonishment,
taking us up in your fingers to marvel at minute tendrils unraveling from our
lumpy selves.  Will she write a poem about us, we wondered.  She paints weird
stuff: maybe we’ll end up in a watercolor and hang in a show.  Exuberant Tubers
she could call it.  Or why not plant us each in a pot on the deck, so two more
vines can join the others already strangling the place?

Instead, you chose the easy way out: found your phone and snapped a photo.

Then you cut us up & dropped us on the compost pile.