It’s too late in the year, but there’s a "V" of geese flying above me, struggling to keep formation. So low I can hear the whistling of their wings. They are headed South. Or maybe not even that far. Perhaps the city, only thirty miles away, will be warm enough. Year-round parks. Bird feeders and hand-outs. Ponds that don’t freeze.

The birds honk and ascend into the sky, navigating by stars I cannot see.

Thick, gray clouds are low and moving eastward. White, wispy ones hang high and stationary. They layer and fold, create shapes and forms. A heart. A horse. The face of Jesus in the sky. All of them made up of particles and precipitation. Soon it will snow, and they will fall.

Where the sun’s at, by the way it slants through snowy evergreen boughs, stretching long shadows across the yard, I know it’s ten-thirty. It is morning and I am tired. I feel like I’ve been in a waking dream for days. One ripe with lucidity.

The air is cold. I take shallow breaths. If I let too much inside, I’ll freeze.

Finally, with my fingers aching cold and my eyes watering, I am brave enough to go in.

My wife, Kali, is on the telephone. Talking with her lover.

I stomp the snow off my boots. Plates and cups rattle behind doors on shelves.

"Keep it down! Why are you stomping? You know I’m on the phone!"

She says this with her hand clamped over the mouthpiece. To stifle our sound. As if any of this can be kept silent.

I stomp more, then move to the coffee pot. Her cup is there. Lipstick on the rim. I touch it then look at the color on my fingertips. It’s not quite red, and it is something new.

I pour coffee. Add milk and sugar. I stir. A clanking spoon inside the cup.

She’s twirling her hair with fury, glaring at me, as she listens to her lover. They are making plans. I know this because she has told me so. In all of this she has told me plenty. She has been honest. She’s told me the Truth.

Finally, she’s fallen in love, she says. Our marriage was something else. Not love, but something to help us find Love. She has found hers. I will find mine. Our divorce is necessary, she says. It is a parting of ways that will free us. And we need to be free because we are no longer the people we married.

That’s what she’s told me anyway.

"I can’t wait to see you," my wife tells the other man. "I’ve taken care of things on this end. I’ll be leaving shortly."

I have not seen my wife in weeks. She has come now to deliver paperwork, to resolve our broken life with a list.

"I don’t want this to be messy," she says to me, putting the receiver into its cradle.

"It’s already messy."

She takes a sheet of paper from the folder she’s brought.

"I’ve made a list," she says, holding it out for me. "Things I want to keep. Things you can have. I trust we know enough of each other that we don’t need lawyers."

The list is written on personalized stationery. Kali Beck, it says. Already, she’s dropped my name.

"I’ll look it over later," I say, squeezing the coffee cup in my hands.

She sighs and fills her cup over the sink, as she’s always done. As usual, she spills a little.

I stare out the window into the field across the road. There are turkeys marching through the dead grass. I count twenty-seven hens. There isn’t a tom in sight. The turkeys gather near a row of abandoned hay bales, pecking and scratching the ground.

"Aren’t you going to say anything?" she asks, sipping her coffee.

I raise my cup to my lips as slowly as I can. I take a long, noisy sip.

"I know when it happened," I say.

"What?"

"When it ended."

She sets her cup down. Leans against the countertop. Stares into the floor.

"Listen," she says, "I don’t want to fight. I just came to give you the papers and say goodbye."

I feel something shaking loose inside, so I hold my cup tighter.

I move closer to her.

"One night, I came home early, and you were in the shower," I begin. "The phone rang so I answered it, and I could feel him on the line."

Kali moves away, toward the wood carving of Jesus that hangs on the kitchen wall. He’s leaning forward under the weight of the cross he carries. She reaches up and touches him.

"I forgot about this," she says. "I made it, but you can keep it."

Kali turns and reaches for her coat.

"After he called, I walked to the bathroom door. And that’s when I heard it."

She slips her arms through her sleeves. Pulls on her hat.

"You heard what?" she asks.

"The shower spraying and water drops against the shower curtain. And I heard you, my wife. Singing a song I’d never heard before. That’s when I knew."

She looks into my eyes and I feel it, as I have always felt it, but I see that she feels nothing. Her brown eyes are glass. Small, dark surfaces for reflecting the world.

"Stop it," she says, quietly.

"After I heard you singing, I walked outside and stood in the dark looking at our house. I stared for a long time at the bathroom window. Through the shades and the steam, I could see a shadow. An outline of a woman. But it wasn’t you."

She turns and opens the door. The snow has come and it is falling into the house. She stands silently, staring into the sky.

I turn away and look out the kitchen window. The big flakes drift and whirl. The turkey hens have gone.

All that’s left are tracks in the snow. The whole sky has gone white.

I feel her leave and it’s all I can do to breathe. I turn to look, and I see that she hasn’t closed the door. Snowflakes fall and melt on the floor. I fill my coffee cup over the sink because I’m afraid of spilling. Then I stand alone looking at Jesus as he hangs on our wall.