Felt-Tip Markers

by Deanna Lernihan

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While you were dying, I tested felt-tip markers on paper until they bled in faded streaks, as if I could practice emptying desk drawers of all they carried, the old love notes, to-do lists, phone numbers without names, passwords to expired accounts, forgotten memberships to forgotten places. You might have said, while you were dying, that it was some false sense of control to determine what to keep and what to throw away, what held purpose and what didn’t, and you might have marveled, just to make me laugh, at how I’d finally learned to sneeze quietly, but I’d like to think I was just making room for you, because I wanted to hold more space for you than ever.

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Deanna Lernihan is a public health professional whose work spans mental health, food sustainability, and animal welfare. She enjoys writing poetry, getting lost in nearby woods, but mostly spending time with her family. Her poetry has recently appeared in Mslexia, Passionfruit Review, Unbroken Journal, and Susurrus Magazine, among other literary journals.

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