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.
Author Bio
Sarah Dunster is wife to one, mother to seven, and an author of fiction and poetry. Her poems have appeared on Wilderness Interface Zone as well as in Victorian Violet Press, Segullah Magazine, Dialogue: Journal of Mormon Thought, and Sunstone Magazine. Her novel Lightning Tree was released by Cedar Fort in April of 2012. When she is not writing, Sarah can often be found cleaning, cooking vegetarian meals, holding small people in her lap, or taking long, risky walks after dark, especially in thunderstorms.
Join us for a discussion of "Celestial Terms" here.
