Onion.

She mistook an onion for a tulip bulb

and planted it in the dirt of his travelling feetpots.

He strutted, muddily, across the globe, dizzy

with the spinning breeze, and butterflies tangled in his locks.

Soon the sprouts sprouted, winding stems

that crept out from between his toes,

poking their mischief over blue spangled shoes

greenly, through little round holes.

And she, an earthed mother of vegetables

and vigilant father of flowers,

dreamed of drowsy-eyed petals that would blush

in his ankles like red-cupped towers.

But instead, layers of swollen root protruded

and the pungent stench of an onion cried

from his soles, through peeling layers of past and skin

and mottled brown flavours of piercing pride.

She grabbed the bend of the onions stalk

and pulled it from the soil, as he slept

until at last it flung, from his toenail beds

into green thumbs, which purpled and wept.