I get on a ladder and pick the crabapples from my tree, put them in my bucket. There are way more than I’ll know what to do with, but I figure I’ll find recipes, maybe do some canning. I’m not really into jam, but I imagine being creative, filling pretty jars with fancy covers and giving them as gifts for birthdays, and later on for Christmas.

So many of the apples have already fallen, and I’ve picked most of the ones from the lawn, keeping the ones that look healthy, ditching the ones that look like some insect has already had its way, or maybe a rodent—and some are just too ripe. The ones that landed on my driveway are mostly squished. I drove right over them before I had the sense to pick them. With the whisper of heat, bees and bugs buzz around them and they smell like rotten nectar.

I imagine last night’s dream, where a palo santo turned into a tent and then a teepee, the tree, before transforming, whispered to me, The apple is blameless, and something else I can’t recall. When I woke, I removed my earplugs, thinking maybe it’d come back to me.

The palo santo was perhaps in Mexico, a place I went one time with a boyfriend: a pianist and composer who wore earplugs every night himself. He was careful with ears, his face, his hands, his looks, his self. He was careless with his internet addiction, the sites he visited for sex. He was careless with the women and the men, the private parts he shared. He was careless when it came to my needs, my feelings, my reaction after I discovered this part of him one day when I borrowed his computer.

It was shortly after Mexico. We’d been together for a year. We went on a hike, where a guide pointed to the palo santo, said it’s the holy branch. It has healthful properties. Used as incense, to drive away bad spirits.

Last night in my dream, there were oceans of them. Then tents, then teepees, then it started raining apples. I left that boyfriend ages ago.

It’s my second year in this new house. The whole yard is full of apples.

I load my buckets. Walking to the house, I slip and fall on some squished ones on the driveway. I spill the healthy apples. I lay with them. It’s not the slickest move.

I stay there for a while. I close my eyes and pretend I’m not just one apple, but all of them: past and present, from all over the universe.