vital signs: prognosis: unknown

By Lesli Black

Vital Signs is a poetry collection that examines what happens when pain is documented instead of believed.

Structured through clinical language, chart notes, and observational records, these poems explore medical trauma, psychological distress, dissociation, and the quiet violence of institutional gaslighting. The voice moves between what is felt and what is recorded-between the body and the system tasked with interpreting it.

This book does not offer recovery arcs or comfort-driven resolutions. It presents contradictions intentionally. Silence is logged as progress. Compliance is mistaken for healing. The reader is placed inside the space where language fails and survival becomes performance.

Written from lived experience and emotional truth, Vital Signs is meant to be read slowly. Some sections may feel disorienting, unsettling, or psychologically intense. This is deliberate.

This is not a story about being fixed.

It is a record of being observed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GHXCL1CH
• ISBN13: 9798244916591
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.0" x 8.0"