APPLE WOOD FLOWER FASHION RING

She lived next to me for years before we ever met. We’d see each other over the fence every now and again, sure, but we never really had a conversation other than exchanging pleasantries. We both had an apple wood tree on our side of the fence, and over the years the trees grew from small saplings into something head-height, and then fence-height, and then above. As the years passed, the branches knotted together, intertwined. We never pruned it. And then one spring, we saw a single flower sprouting where it shouldn’t—at a place where two of the branches had grown into each other, joined into one wood. Then she knocked on my door.