Ficus Futility

I gave it up for dead.

It's little slips of cool green
had yellowed and twisted
into shriveled flimsiness,
exhausted
and ready for dust.
I watched it happen,
helpless.
I wanted to save it,
I tried;
but overwatering
diminished to underwatering
and just-right-watering
was unwittingly denied.
The sun
the nutrients
the fertilizer
for all their good intentions
burned blotches,
scorched fiery edges
in protest.
An ugly scar to my decor,
I gave it up for dead.
I shuffled it off
to my back-porch mortuary
where all my other
disappointments and failures
stand in witness
to acts unatoned.
Graying tributes to my laziness,
they await unfinished fate:
a proper burial
in a dempsy dumpster grave.
I gave them up for dead
but I never disposed of the bones.