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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