I'm staring up at the ceiling light fixture -- a wrought-iron, medieval-style chandelier that I always thought was too ostentatious for this room. But you loved it, bought it, brought it home. I remember hanging it one day while you were at work, to surprise you when you got home and kicked off those uncomfortable shoes you always wore. You were mad that I had done it while no one was home -- imagined me electrocuted and lying on the floor for hours before anyone would find me .

We were going to make steaks for dinner that day. You had picked them up from the little portuguese butcher shop around the corner -- you liked going there because the owner made dirty jokes about "fine pieces of meat", even when I was with you, which made us both laugh. You had set them out to marinate for a couple hours, planning to cook them later. Instead, we made love standing in the kitchen, your hand on the door of the dishwasher we never used -- trying to get a better angle, you said, smiling -- and we grabbed a pizza after picking Tyler up from school.

I remember that day so clearly -- the floral pattern on the dress you wore, and how you left the house with no underwear on. I remember hating the light fixture, but loving you, and that was enough to want to put it up.

Now I love the light fixture, if only for the time it represents, and I'm staring up at it from the living room floor in the dead of night, watching it pulse periodically from the headlights that zoom past the window.

You are in the bedroom, asleep. I can feel the waves of your steady breath rolling over me as if you were right next to me. I feel around in the dark for your sharp elbow, which I usually cup in my hand while we sleep, because you have active dreams and dig it into my ribs. But your elbow is not there, and my hand lays awkward and useless like a broken bird's wing. Your elbow is not there because you are not there. You are in the next room. I am lying on the living room floor, and you have just told me that you are leaving me.

I remember our first fight. We were on a two-day, cross-country drive. We were going to see your sister, the only member of your family you really talked to any more -- the one you would spend hours on the phone with, laughing and chattering like a teenager. I had never met her.

I don't know what we fought about, but by the time we pulled into the truck stop, our voices were loud enough to fill every inch of the van. You climbed out, and said something impossibly witty and cutting -- why can't I remember the words you said? -- before slamming the door and crossing the parking lot in short, determined steps.

You were gone for a long time. I stood leaning against the car door, smoking cigarettes down to the filter as fast as I could, just so I could light another. I wondered if I should go look for you -- maybe a burly trucker with mustard on his T-shirt and a gut the size of his dashboard had taken a shine to you, had carried your tiny frame out the back door and away from me. I watched one of the streetlights flicker off every few minutes, noticing every time it went off, but never seeing it go back on. You were gone for a long time, and I wondered if I should go in after you, wondered if you were waiting for me to do something chivalrous to end the fight.

And then there you were, bounding out the door, carrying a soda that was impossibly big for your tiny hands. And you were laughing. You had bought me a present in the giftshop, a cheap plastic keychain with the phrase "Don't Mess with Texas". The absurdity of it had amused you -- we were in Vermont. And just like that, the fight was over .

You are in the bedroom asleep, and I am awake, frighteningly awake. I want to feel the angles of your body -- your knobby knees, your boney ankles, your sharp hipbones. I want to touch the scar on your back from a childhood operation, the one you hate because it shows when you wear a tanktop or a low-cut dress -- which is why you never wear them. That scar is mine. It is my personal spot of love on your body. Nobody sees that scar but me, and I kiss it every time I am zipping you into a nice dress . I can feel the scar now, the smoothness of your skin giving way to a leathery patch. You are in the bedroom, resolved to leave me, and I am on the living room floor, thinking of your scar.

Tyler was born in Avignon the year we tried -- and failed -- to learn French. He came out feet first, so fast that you had to keep from squishing his foot between your legs as you walked up the clinic stairs. The nurse delivered him -- the doctor was nowhere in sight -- and carried him casually over to the sink to rinse him off. We didn't think the nurse was very fond of us, but then it didn't seem like anyone was fond of les americains in that town. But then we had Tyler, perfect nose and angular body, and we wondered how this creature had come from us, and what we were going to do with him.

Poor kid. He would endlessly be tormented by jokes about the French, even from his parents. When he would sulk as a baby, we would laugh and blame it on the French attitude -- must've been something in the water, we'd say . For the first few months, we called him The Frog.

You're not the man I married, you said during the heart-to-heart you had planned at the kitchen table. You sat across from me and offered me coffee, and there was kindness and pity in your voice. But it wasn't a heart-to-heart -- you had already decided, you were merely informing me. Your back stiffened as you talked, but you were calm, resolute, tapping your ring absentmindedly against the edge of your cup. I sat stunned, feeling a tightness blaze across my chest, as if it might implode on itself. I couldn't seem to find breath, but you pressed on, with detailed explanations that I didn't even hear. So this is what it's like to feel my heart break.

If I wasn't the man you had married, then I didn't know who I was. I couldn't understand how, somewhere along the way, I had changed into someone else. And now I was sitting across the table from another man's wife. And she was leaving me, too.

I am on the living room floor and you are in the bedroom, sleeping. My body is on fire, every inch of me aware of your exact location -- just through that door . The tiny hairs on my arms tug at my skin, lifting it away from bone and muscle and stretching it toward you. I remain as motionless as possible, eyes wide open, feeling the ache to be near you. But you're in the other room, and the other room is a world away. Sleep won't come to me tonight. You are leaving me, and all I can do is stare at the light fixture that hangs -- crookedly, I notice now -- from the ceiling.