GRIEF Poem: What can a machine know of grief?, by Maxwell Gruber

I asked a computer to tell me about grief,
and it said the right words.

It told me that love was grief’s memory, a testament to the bonds that shape us.
A trail of perseverance, an echo that teaches us to learn to live with loss.
It spoke of transformation, of pain, of remembering, of profoundness.

I asked a computer to tell me about grief,
and it said the right words,
but without the aching of empathy
that comes from man.

It did not offer empty comforts, nor did it provide stories of love gone by.
No anecdote, a quote, a phrase, a way to lament alongside me.
It simply answered with the right pixels, as quietly as I had asked.

I asked my friend Katherine to tell me about grief,
and she could not think of the right words.
We cried together anyway.