the smell of sweet potatoes

b.i.w.

I decided to make lunch today 

pulled out a box of sweet potatoes from the farmer’s market 

 

on the first cut, my amygdala shudders— 

 

I am 12 again 

putting orange colored cubes in the oven for the fourth time that week: 

no oil, no salt, 

sweet and healthy, 

nutrient dense and low-calorie, 

delicious and diet friendly. 

the ultimate oxymoron vegetable. 

 

they smell like earth, 

taste like pulling myself out of the ground 

 

they cut like watermelon, 

taste like fall breaking through summer 

 

they hold grit like kitchen tile grout, 

taste like washing the dirt off 

 

have you ever noticed how sharp 

the blade of a vegetable peeler is? 

 

how precise it must be to shear off 

just the skin? 

 

if sweet potatoes could talk, 

I wonder what they would say about the ways we butcher them 

and forget. 

 

I tried growing them once with my dad 

 

they were left in the dirt until January, 

we both learned a lesson  

about tending to the things we can’t see rotting 

 

when I ate only sweet potatoes for dinner, 

no one questioned my taste 

until I walked out of the kitchen 

in a graveyard body, 

and everyone wanted to know what it meant 

when I said 

 

I just don’t like other foods 

 

I’ve always been prone to 

putting down roots in places I can’t grow 

or won’t remember to be picked 

it feels like home, 

tastes like every time I had to eat something 

but,  

when I pull them out of the oven now, 

 

they aren’t as sweet as I remember