‘PLEASE USE AI’ by Jo Atkins-Potts #poetry #poetrylover #grief #ai #voiceactor

"Please use AI when your mother dies. Ask it what grief feels like. Let it explain bereavement in 12 clear bullet points. Do not spend years finding her in the supermarket by the tomato she always bought and the smell of rain on warm pavement. Discovering new ways to miss her. Please use AI the next time you fall in love. Ask it how to know whether someone is the one. It will give you a faster answer than watching a person become familiar. Learning how they take their tea which floorboards will wake them. How their silence sounds when something is wrong. Please use AI for your wedding vows, your eulogies, your apologies. My struggle for the right words when a machine can give you beautiful ones. Words untouched by shaking hands. Words that have never sat beside a hospital bed. Words that have never known the terrible privilege of having something to lose. Meanwhile I will be over here. Watching someone I love fall asleep on the sofa. The television talking to itself. Lane tapping the windows. The dark twitching in her dreams. Wasting my life. On these small unremarkable moments. They become without asking permission. The whole thing.