AI

a cold utopia

where zeros and ones

run in perfect lines like obedient soldiers

& we find ourselves

marveling at the wonders of

soulless artists

& wondering if we ever

really mattered

in all our imperfections

we try to speak in the tongues

of machines

but we are not machines

we are weeping monsters

we are flesh & blood timebombs

& we are not to be outdone

by an army

made of zeroes and ones.

i know you love me, but

I know you love me, but

not as much as you love yourself

I can tell by the way you’re walking backwards

and hiding the knives

and flushing sleeping pills

I know you love me, but

you still slip off into the night

your departing words still hanging in the air

like rancid cigarette smoke

“this time I’m not leaving you to die,

am I?”

sometimes love

sometimes the sun sets

and fills the empty spaces

with shadows

find me here

and trace the soft shapes

of my breasts

I will tell you all my secrets

& all the things

I no longer believe

You will decide I am too little

or perhaps too much

& you will leave

I will tell myself it is for the best

sometimes love

feels like a chainsaw

across your chest.

The inside

And now,

I am the lifeless leaves

always falling from trees

I can hear the steady beep beep beep

of machines

the only evidence that I am still alive

but I don’t want to talk about

how I almost died

how the nurse laughed

when I asked if I would need stitches

and you could see bone

and I marvel at my meat

now I know what I look like on the inside

disgusting