Can’t leave them even for a day,
for days will try, like seeds,
to stick together –
you think you have just one
but it was two or three,
enough,  at some point,
for the soil to dry out,
and what had been eager and healthy
last time I looked
has completely shriveled up –
small thread where once a stalk was

When I came back after that one day
(or was it two or three?)
and saw them languishing,
I squirted, a long time,
with my spray bottle,
hoping they still had the structure
to take it in, hoping the soil, too,
would hold the moisture

But fearing I’d been fooled
as with one fairy kingdom day
that lasts for years
and let them die.
I’m sorry. Tomorrow
I shall see if they revive.
Tomorrow, maybe,
I will try again.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 21, 2022

I didn’t have the heart
to kill them outright,
or leave them to die
in their four inch pots,
though my neighbor said
they were too stunted
to be worth the effort

So I took them out
(feeling  vaguely like some servant
in a fairy tale, who doesn’t want to kill the child as ordered)
I dug a place in last year’s garden,
wholly overtaken by thistle, sorrel, blackberries and grasses,
robust and deeply rooted,
eagerly becoming meadow

I plonked in the tomatoes,
wrested last years cages from the weeds
to keep myself from stepping on them
(and in case they find a way to grow)
Sorry, little plants. Good luck.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2021