Imagine the stark symmetry that created these apples—you said—rows and rows of trees, craggy with wind and months of frozen Upstate winter, which can somehow coax blooms again. You pulled a cap that I’d knitted for you closer to your eyes. I remembered finding the yarn, thinking immediately of your skin, the way our first summer had changed you into someone I’d never seen before. You were like that. With every season, I saw a different person. Now, walking through autumn in Union Square, we’d been a couple for over a year, and you were talking about orchards.

–Sharon Rousseau writes and takes pictures in New York City and the Hudson Valley.