He gave her a melon head, heavy with damp and seed. Two
carrot tops for eyes and marrow
thighs and a row of split-peas strung like fairy lights to
shine a pleasing mouth, always on.

She grew his arms. Cucumbers, pulled from the
dirt of her own spider-spun allotment.
Broad-bean fingers spreading out in astonishment.

He got a little stuck with hair, but eventually
chose the carrot roots which hung so masterfully,
disguising muck-bruised ears of corn of which she was
self-conscious.

Tesco’s for his toes. Shooting asparagus tips like
a man she once knew with squashed-berry circulation, purple and
clotting. A tough, unyielding parsnip to complement

pink grapefruits; two. They’ll do, she smiled a
froth-green smile and gave him mud to slap on
apple joints and pear white bones.

He shed watery onion tears when she presented him with
buttocks – two halves of orange pumpkin she
plucked from Halloween nightmares, singed and candle-smelling
still. Her cries twittered into the night when

he gave her raspberry
rouge, earrings fashioned out of curling
furling vine strands wrapped in paper garlic skin.

He gave her lungs. Avocados, damaged stock.
She bargained for his cabbage heart.
He covered her with turnip peelings; made goosebumps to
read like braile.
She arched her sprout-pore back like tiny bridges
over his.

When they were built, they held hands fat with love and
swore to reinvent each other
every day.