"Moroni's Wife is an Angel, Too" by Christopher Bissett

Listen to this piece on our podcast

His record is quite good, I think, and I am proud of him. He buried the plates almost as tenderly as he buried me.

Moroni wept bitterly over both our graves, mine and the stone box at Cumorah that he buried our civilization in. O ye fair ones! How is it that ye could have fallen? How indeed! We blend together, our civilization and I, and I feel myself slipping into metaphor, as angel wives tend to do.

We are many. Our names are lost in every story, forgotten by generations of record keepers that never considered writing us down. Our voices speak from the dust, but it is not a familiar spirit, because there is nothing familiar about our voices. There is no seer stone laid in that box to interpret our words. We remain sealed up in plates of gold, not out of sacredness.

I will tell you what I can.

I did everything Moroni needed me to do during that last war. I took good care of his children, inventing for them consoling and creative reasons why their daddy couldn't be at home with us. I know he wanted to be. I know he loved us very much. When he came home he would try his best to make up for lost time. They would run to him with their arms stretched out whenever they heard the jangle of his armor down the lane. He would trot as fast as a man made out of metal could trot to make them squeal with laughter, throwing them high in the air. He read the stories of our fathers to them on the stoop. When it was time for him to leave, he held them so hard I thought he might break them.

A few weeks after he left us for the last time, I heard the genocidal soldiers approach and locked my children in the outhouse, then fled across the fields to decoy them away. I hoped the soldiers would go after me and pass by our little home on their raid. My plan didn't work, though. My littlest son heard the jangle of men's armor and ran out of the outhouse thinking he was hearing his father coming home.

It was a very easy thing to turn into an angel. We hardly even noticed when it happened. The worst of it was watching Moroni crumple and howl when he found our bodies. I couldn't comfort him anymore. After he buried us, I watched his father drag him back to the head of his ten thousand doomed men to be witness for our people's last battle. This would break his heart even more, as if he had to bury me twice when he finally realized all war was in vain. He was the only one left in the end. It would be years of wandering until he turned into an angel, too.

Looking over the record, I still don't know why my people were so quick to forget about their wives. From the moment they left Jerusalem, they had to be reminded that founding a new nation needs foremothers, too. My husband was named after a general of war that waved that title of liberty that said: in memory of our wives. And to all men of war, that’s what we are. We are memories. It’s as if we are already dead to them. Now we aren’t even memories anymore. Even our names have been forgotten.

The title of liberty my husband Moroni waved turned out to be quite different, a book instead of a torn garment, but the message is the same. In memory of our wives. When you read the pages, hang on the words that are not there. Feast upon the silence in the scriptures. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost, wherefore in the last days they will speak to you the words that were never written.

This piece was published in 2026 as part of the 15th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.