Written by Melanie Hall
My friends stand
lopsided in our living room.
Raspberry-vodka-fueled
conversation
about AI and America.
They remove themselves
with middle-class flair
from the consequences
of their machine-made essays.
“It just summarizes,
it just outlines.”
Fresh water,
cognitive Decline:
what is the human cost of this?
They do not ask and neither do I.
Cucumber tequila and ignorance.
My roommate rants about Trump
but I remember
how she did not vote
when I thought a woman
could be president.
More talk, louder now –
the rich hate us,
AI is a good tool,
nothing is affordable
(they afford it).
And I, sober
pajama-clad, coddling
a water bottle,
waiting for a moment
to shuffle to sleep.
They yell through my bedroom door:
America is not
“The way God wanted it”
as if Jesus cares for countries.
“We are real christians”
as if they go to church.
Earlier
my roommate told me
“work harder”
“plan better”
with my money.
Her parents pay her rent.
She stole $100 from me
and I never confronted her.
They talk talk talk
in green circles
lined with manicured shrubs
in-ground pools
paid-for college:
the government wants to divide us,
microplastics in our food
the system is the enemy–
their epiphanies–
until the Uber arrives.
They do not know
how to learn.
.
Melanie Hall is an undergraduate English student at Towson University. She is Editor-in-Chief of Grub Street literary magazine and has been previously published in Discourse, Towson’s academic journal for literary criticism. She hopes to pursue an MFA in creative writing after graduation.