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MENTAL STATUS SONNET | Zoya Gurm

Starting from today, move backwards. 

We’ll see how you became by unspooling,
taken back in increments of seven. 

How many years since you last received a birthday card? 
Since you’ve stared in your own eyes, flushed in incantation?

Can you spell appalled backwards? 

Let me take some notes: 

Patient reports unkept and relentless dreams,
lymph nodes swollen with unreadable poems. 

Disorientation to self, especially in bar bathroom mirrors. 

And are you here right now? In this season that smells like salt? 

Squeeze my fingers when a word becomes 
so overwhelming you can’t bear it
and I’ll hold your hand until the feeling passes. 

Zoya Gurm is a poet and resident physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Verse II, Clearline magazine, and zines from Flower Press, Minto Press, and Room Project. Her debut chapbook is Antiparallel in the River.

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