As stated, everyday marriages crumble, there are certainly many reasons for it, but one that will prove to be true throughout all cases are the incompatibility between those affected spouses and its detriment to their marriage. In those real-life cases one of the two can make a decision and take action, such as through divorce. However, for Melissa and the narrator there is no time for one or the other to take action, as their world is physically coming crashing down on them. Through this hyperbolic fiction it helps demonstrate this social idea of the dangers of marriage and commitment. Melissa has realized this danger and has accepted the fact, useless to do anything against it she questions the narrator, “We’re not all that much alike, are we?” (Page 5 Par. 6). Many marriages involve people who are not alike, while it may be a good thing for some, it certainly shows as a disservice to this particular marriage. Brockmeier desires to show through the narrator and Melissa how dangerous this commitment to one another may possibly be. It leaves Melissa morbidly depressed and disconnected from the world around her. Meanwhile, contrasting her feelings are that of the narrator. At the very end of the story, the narrator can think of nothing but Melissa, desiring her affection and return more than anything in the world as they lay on the ground, inches away from the ceiling, “I was waiting to feel her return my touch, and I felt at that moment, felt with all my heart, that I could wait the whole life of the world for such a thing,” (Page 13 Par. 2). This marriage destroys the lives of these two just as much as the ceiling physically does itself. Melissa through her life-long mistake of marrying this seemingly incompetent man, and the narrator through his hopeless for love to a woman who does not love him. Brockmeier poetically makes this daring statement on society and warns his readers of it through this fictional tale.