I love you like climbing the apple tree in my grandmother’s backyard.
Weaving through the branches,
childishly ignorant of the power lines above,
tangling with the upper branches of the tree.
Yes, that’s exactly how I love you.
Effortlessly, dangerously.
Like I could touch the sky.
Like the world could never harm me.

I love you like a sharp crisp bite of apple at the end of August,
and I love you like the sharp sting of the wasp within it
when you step on its rotting remains left forgotten on the lawn in early September.
I love you like something sharp, painful, unforgettable.
Even if you throw it aside after a single bite.
Even if you leave it to rot.

And perhaps I haven’t climbed a tree in years.
Perhaps my grandmother’s backyard is no longer hers,
that tree no longer one I can visit.
But still,
I love you.

Because I love you like you’re my childhood apple tree.
I love you like you’re my childhood.
I love you like you’re something that I’ll never fully have again,
but that I’ll carry pieces of with me
until I dissolve into dirt
and am absorbed by the roots of a tree,
which will grow up towards the sky
and bloom
and hope you’re watching
and hope you know the flowers are for you
and all the apples too.

All of them.

Every last one.