Summary

"You Were Conceived" is a direct address, in which the speaker tells her child of the night of her secret wedding, which was blissful. She stayed in his bed for days after he left, until his mother found her. Her new husband died after their wedding, and no one at the funeral knew who she was, but she knew she was "the last thing he tasted" (21).

In "Trying to Swim With God," the speaker and her mother discuss the deaths of women in their city, as they swim at the local pool. The speaker thinks of a woman named Kadija, who died walking down her block. Later, the speaker practices holding her breath in her bathtub, thinking of how her mother said nobody can fight "the body returning to God" (22). She wonders when Kadija fell dead in the street, if she thought she...