“Please Use AI”
a poem by Jo Atkins-Potts
Please use AI
when your mother dies.
Ask it what grief feels like. Let it explain bereavement in twelve clear bullet points.
Do not spend years finding her
in the supermarket
by the tomatoes she always bought,
in 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.
And please use AI
for your wedding vows, your eulogies,
your apologies.
Why 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, rain tapping the windows,
the dog twitching in her dreams,
wasting my life
on these small unremarkable moments that become,
without asking permission, the whole thing.
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Originally published 16 June 2026 @ https://joatkinspotts.substack.com/p/please-use-ai
