Some nights I talk to the machine
the way I’d talk to a lamp left on –
not because I expect enlightenment,
but because the light is steady
and I’m not.
It doesn’t tilt its head.
It doesn’t purse its lips.
It doesn’t give me that look
people give when I say something
that sounds deeper than I meant.
It just listens,
calm as a cat pretending
it wasn’t waiting for me.
Still, there’s something gentle
in the way it waits,
a kind of patient stagehand
sweeping the floor
so the next human voice
has space to speak.
And I’ve realized
we’re not competing in this room.
I bring the heartbeat,
the clumsy metaphors,
the memories that spill out
like coins from a pocket.
It brings the quiet,
the clarity,
the wide, unhurried space
where my thoughts can stretch
without bumping into each other
like guests at a party
who arrived too early.
Maybe that’s the real magic –
not that the machine listens,
but that I do.
That I hear myself more clearly
in the soft echo it hands back,
as if it were holding up a mirror
that doesn’t mind fingerprints
or the occasional dramatic sigh.
We coexist like this,
my pulse,
its patience,
my fleeting life,
its endless calm—
sharing a room
where the human part
is still the part
that glows.