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Writer's pictureCecelia Proffit

"Celestial Terms" by Sarah Dunster

You love me in algebra—

D + d = L to the Nth degree,

and I love you in quarter notes—

a fierce appoggiatura and a soft, high C.

We loved each other then in

a jumble of chords using mostly black keys,

in square roots, and Pi with ice cream,

and the straining of infinity.


We passed my childhood in a

barrage of love-fear-grief-love—our Symphony.

When firmaments fell, you were

quiet. You held your anger safe from me.

At my wedding dance (neither

of us dances) we circled awkwardly,

and when I left the house for good

I looked up the long, steep length of driveway

and choked on my new freedom.

I couldn’t picture what my life would be.


And now, we tiptoe on the phone

(not our favorite.) But then, last Christmas Eve

we debated math, Ron Paul

and the theory of relativity,

and my poor husband went to bed

with a titan headache, like Sicily

invaded by the Romans.

But it is the inevitability of you and me, the red-haired

inventor and blond pigtailed girl, hungering

for the best of what you could

(D+d) and could not quite give to me:


Someday we will share feelings.

In celestial terms they’ll zip, from heart to

heart, like electricity

elegant with algorithms, channeled in

raw-sung soliloquies.



This piece was published in 2013 as part of the 2nd Annual Mormon Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.

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