Emily Bannigan is a writer and teacher from Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA. She is a graduate of Williams College and currently lives in South Korea.

One Sunday Afternoon

I fall asleep on the subway,
letting my chin bob to the soft waves
of force tugging on my body

while my thoughts, like a lizard
drawn to a sun-kissed rock,
press tentatively at first

and then with careless freedom
the spot where my shoulder and arm
sway in line with yours,

the delicate knock
of my pale and scaly knee against
the doors, obscurely carved, of yours,

and you do not pull away, say shoo,
or pull my buoy from its happy depths
back to the surface’s glint;

for forty minutes I bask like this,
my blood turning from cold
to cool and self-assured

as if there could be nothing more simple
than the pulse of a warm, warm body
shedding the scales of another

until we arrive at the end of the line, and you gently
unlatch the hook from my shoulder,
say, Hey, sleepy baby, we’re here

and return my skin to myself
encased like a gift
in a bubble of high-voltage air.

Pink Geranium

She extends herself,
hands reaching out from the coffin,
fingers cradling the December air
and its scent of uncut grass, as if this
earth was not so abundant in the dead.

Then she blows kisses
with all the warmth of the underneath
as if her lips could carry messages
and her blooms answer our prayers.
We placed her here precisely for this,

to reach deep a root
and sing to her gray-stoned partner:
Come with me, Richard. Stretch out
your hands: there is growing to do,
there is life yet to be had. Up here,

there is someone who still loves you.