At night, my husband takes it off puts it on the dresser beside his wallet and keys laying down, for a moment, the accoutrements of manhood. Sometimes, when he’s not looking, I pick it up savor the weight, the dark face, ticked with silver the brown, ostrich leather band with its little goosebumps raised as the flesh is raised in pleasure. He had wanted a watch and was pleased when I gave it to him. And since we’ve been together ten years it seemed like the occasion for the gift of a watch a recognition of the intricate achievements of marriage, its many negotiations and nameless triumphs. But tonight, when I saw it lying there among his crumpled receipts and scattered pennies I thought of my brother’s wife coming home from the coroner carrying his rings, his watch in a clear, ziplock bag, and how we sat at the table and emptied them into our palms their slight pressure all that remained of him. How odd the way a watch keeps going even after the heart has stopped. My grandfather was a watchmaker and spent his life in Holland leaning over a clean, well-lit table, a surgeon of time attending to the inner workings: spring, escapement, balance wheel. I can’t take it back, the way the man I love is already disappearing into this mechanism of metal and hide, this accountant of hours that holds, with such precise indifference, all the minutes of his life.