When artificial intelligence scrapes everything we’ve created,
every poem, every song, every essay, and news article,
that story of you crying in the bathroom over a girl—spilt milk, of looking at supermarket deli meat and remembering your dead mum’s curry, of celebrating with your dad after a football win.
Everything remembered, synthesised, artificially recreated.

In a time when artificial intelligence scrapes everything we’ve created,
showing us what life used to be like
reminding us of that time we asked ourselves…
what would we do if money weren’t an object?
We’re not quite sure, we argue over it
mourn the loss of a private memory, like a child whose pencil’s been snatched away from her…

In a time when artificial intelligence scrapes everything we’ve created,
uniting us by our miseries
and fears—
we return to those spaces we used to inhabit
the back of coffee shops
window seats at double decker buses
nooks and crannies of the city library
and the depths of spoken word communities
to seek solace
hoping for others who seek it, too