Orchards
September vignettes
We fell in love four years ago during this season. Since then, autumn has hummed with romance and possibility for me. Every September I tell you, “This is the season we fell in love!”
Now here you are, my husband, a word awkward on my tongue, a word I forget sometimes when introducing you to strangers. “This is my partner—I mean… husband!” I’ll exclaim, mind still catching up with spirit.
In the fall of 2021 I fell hard for you, and for Colorado all over again. Less than one hundred years ago my neighborhood was an orchard. That fall I’d call you from the warm sidewalk outside my house where wine-dark apples sweetened the gutters with their decomposing, whole bushels heaped on the curb, yellow jackets patrolling the rotting topography. After work I’d drive the 30 minutes to visit you at the farm where you lived. September cast the fields north of Boulder in its specific light, raw and blue, both silk and fire. This light tugged at the cellar door in my heart as I drove the country roads.
The farm where you lived has an orchard too.
You showed me the candle-colored pears and apples hung in thick rows on bowed silver branches. We couldn’t know that in four years we would take photos in this orchard, me in a white dress embroidered with flowers with pink roses in my hair, you in your button down and abalone bolo tie and best jeans.
What tender histories could the orchards whisper back to us? Fruit trees, arguably, are the most intimate with human beings of all their tree brethren, subject to our pruning, tending, and gleaning. Did the apple and pear trees know, as we stood there in the fall of 2021, nervous to even hold hands, that we would be married? Had they already begun to count our story in their ringed cores?
You were the first person I knew who acted like art-making was as natural as breathing. You seemed free of creative inhibition or neuroses; I was astonished at the absence of Judge and Jury in your mind. In a dim noisy Denver divebar, talking close enough for your breath to warm my ear, you acted as though no institution of higher learning, no editor or famous instagram poet, could scare you off from making and sharing your music. You told me that for people like me, like us, the need to make art was a soul need. “It will never go away,” you said. Barely knowing me, you instantly counted me amongst your creative peers. It was the fall of 2021 and I’d spent all of four hours with you, but you talked to me like I was your family.
Driving to the farm to see you I let the September light break through those cellar doors in my heart and it illuminated dreams and visions I thought I’d surrendered to the cobwebs. Autumn, dirt roads, and new love kindled their own kind of alchemy and a spark of music blazed to life in me. While I drove I’d sing along to Sierra Ferrell, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan and Lucinda Williams. I stayed up til 1am playing banjo and woke again at 6 buzzing with energy, ready to write. At your bi-monthly open mics I tested out my new songs, at first unable to even look at the crowd out of stage fright, eyes squeezed shut and voice shaky. One night you asked me to stay after a learn a Dolly Parton-Chet Atkins duet with you and its still one of my favorite songs.
Barely even pretending to work, on my lunch break I’d meet you at cafés and we’d drink coffee and walk by the creek or down Pearl St. high on September’s blue fire. You let me wear your worn shearling jacket, an epic thrift store score, and I’d worry the holes in the pockets, the crumbled juniper needles you’d stashed in them. Once in a while, we’d pass an apple tree and pull down the golden fruit right into our hands. All this abundance hanging over the sidewalks for free. We’d give each other bites of the sweetest ones. Once in a while, you’d throw your arm around my shoulder like I was someone who belonged with you.
Pure September sweetness in a song:
This Substack is often written in manic spurts in coffee shops. If you’d like to support my writing, you can buy me a coffee. You can also share this with someone who might appreciate it— that would be cool. Thank you and love you!
Beautifully written, Emily💗
So gorgeous ❤️