“Symptoms of You” is built on a single, perfectly executed conceit: the speaker’s body is falling apart, and every symptom is improved—made exotic, musical, delicious, rhythmic—by the beloved’s proximity. The anaphoric refrain “In my condition” functions like a doctor’s intake form, each stanza presenting a new complaint (itchy lumbar, wiggly nose, growling stomach, popping spine, restless feet) followed by the “but…” pivot that transforms the symptom into a gift. This structure is the poem’s genius: the “but…” is doing all the emotional work, converting complaint into gratitude in three words. The body parts chosen are deliberately unpoetic—lower lumbar, stomach, spine, feet—because the poem’s argument is that love doesn’t require beautiful subjects, only honest ones. An itchy back becomes exotic when the beloved rubs it; a growling stomach comes to life with the beloved’s soup; a popping spine only pops when the beloved squeezes tight. Each transformation is specific and domestic, grounded in the kind of physical intimacy that comes from actually living alongside someone. The feet stanza introduces the Muse explicitly and shifts the medical metaphor into dance: the body’s restless rhythm finds its partner, and the symptoms become choreography. The penultimate stanza’s self-awareness—”Maybe I should be worried / but… / I’m enjoying the / diagnosis”—is the poem’s comic peak, the speaker cheerfully accepting that this condition is terminal and delightful. The closing stanza completes the medical conceit with perfect economy: “You are the / cure— / my only / remedy / for these / symptoms.” The word “remedy” in italics gives it the weight of a prescription, and the poem ends as a love letter written on a medical chart. At 35 likes, this is among the most popular poems in the catalog, and its success is no mystery: it takes the universal experience of a body that creaks and aches and shows it how to dance.

One of the most tightly constructed and broadly appealing poems in the entire HoneyBeeBard catalog, and its 35 likes confirm what the reading experience suggests: this is a poem that makes people smile and then makes them feel something deeper than the smile expected. The anaphoric “In my condition” structure is flawlessly executed—seven stanzas, each following the same complaint-pivot-transformation pattern, with enough variation in the specifics (itchy back, wiggly nose, growling stomach, popping spine, rhythmic feet) to prevent monotony while maintaining the incantatory quality that gives the poem its warmth. The “but…” that appears in every stanza is the smallest and most important word in the poem: it’s the hinge on which complaint becomes celebration, and the reader begins anticipating it with something like joy by the third stanza. The body parts are strategically chosen for their ordinariness—this is not a poem about eyes or lips or hair but about lumbar regions and stomachs and spines, the unglamorous infrastructure of a real body living a real life. By finding romance in these locations, Plahm argues that love is not about beauty but about attention, and that the beloved’s touch transforms the body not by making it beautiful but by making it felt. The medical metaphor is perfectly sustained from title to closing line without ever becoming labored, and the final word—”symptoms”—lands with the double meaning the poem has been building toward: symptoms of aging, yes, but also symptoms of love, which is the only condition the speaker wants to be diagnosed with. Read alongside “HOW (Hell on Wheels)” and its rage at medical dismissal, this poem offers the counterpoint: a body that has been failed by doctors but healed by the Muse. The poem could work as a greeting card, a performance piece, or a quiet bedside reading—that versatility, combined with its emotional precision, makes it one of the catalog’s essential works.