Dan Hill

Case Notes

Pt. reports feeling like a mollusc.
when pressed for which mollusc exactly,
he replies that the mollusc resists
labels. Pt. feels faint on hot days
and viscous in the cold.

I have offered slow-release sodium and prescribed
exposure to the threat of birdsong.

 Pt. asks if I admire the pleat of his skirt,
his retractable tentacles. I demur

 under some duress, he expands
on the mollusc. He is a snail
that has been amputated
but insists he is not a slug.

Pt. complains of phantom pains
where his life used to be.

I have referred for CBT.
Pt. advises he has spent
enough time gazing in garden ponds
at lots of little selves
stuck at an earlier stage.

Pt. has been told to treat the snails selves
with compassion and curiosity; to avoid
the easy out of pesticide.

I have confirmed to patient snail that he can call should he feel
himself becoming an octopus. we will prescribe fluoxetine.

Pt. leaves. I break for lunch. a cracked tooth
in my salad, a black pearl on my tongue.

Dan Hill is a Welsh poet living in Hertfordshire. His debut pamphlet is published with The Wildheart Press in May 2026. 

Dan had this to say about this poem:

Language seems to come up short in the doctor’s office – especially when discussing mental health. Reading back through your medical file, language creaks even more. Intimate, private words are translated into detachment; objectivity – devoid of the voice that first struggled to say them. This poem seeks to wrangle a sense of lived surreality and lyricism into that harshness.