A man speaks to his six-months pregnant wife. He says she lures him "to our conjugal bed / to use each other gently . . . . " He imagines "eyes staring at me from / deep inside" that "say we are captured . . . . " He concludes "We are / too sure we need each other / to let go."
An elderly woman is dying in the hospital. She still speaks to the poet's persona, "even near the end when she only screamed / at her children that they wanted her dead." Though she seems to want to continue living, when she lapses into a coma, her children make "the doctor stop all heroic measures." Thus, they kill her just like she said they would.