Isaiah Alexander
artificial advice is killing me
your best friend is chatGPT.
you spill stories like therapy,
a faceless app obsessed with revisionist history
handing out blame.
you frame yourself
as some brittle survivor.
she critiques me for just leaving —
for not cleaning up your mess.
“move on, let go”
she types to you
“he’s selfish and the cause of distress.”
she agrees —
like an artificial oracle
clutching your lies like gospel,
scrubbing the blood off your hands
to paint my own palms red.
your ai therapist is a carnival mirror.
you tilt the glass,
distort the shape of every memory
feeding her counterfeit grief
lies on lies till the reflection grins back.
fuck her.
fuck you.
this is proof:
the machine only knows
how to echo
the truths you choose.
you spill stories like therapy,
a faceless app obsessed with revisionist history
handing out blame.
you frame yourself
as some brittle survivor.
she critiques me for just leaving —
for not cleaning up your mess.
“move on, let go”
she types to you
“he’s selfish and the cause of distress.”
she agrees —
like an artificial oracle
clutching your lies like gospel,
scrubbing the blood off your hands
to paint my own palms red.
your ai therapist is a carnival mirror.
you tilt the glass,
distort the shape of every memory
feeding her counterfeit grief
lies on lies till the reflection grins back.
fuck her.
fuck you.
this is proof:
the machine only knows
how to echo
the truths you choose.
the blue collar father
since men loving their fathers is frowned upon
I’ll love you in silence —
the kind that hangs like smoke in a locked room,
the kind that refuses to leave.
in memory, you sit
hands folded over the table,
your eyes a corridor
I could never walk through,
your voice a rusted hinge,
always catching, never fixed.
I traced patience in your shoulders,
in the way your calloused palms
pressed bills flat on the counter —
lights / rent / food —
your love reduced
to the weight of paper.
I’ll love you in silence —
the kind that hangs like smoke in a locked room,
the kind that refuses to leave.
in memory, you sit
hands folded over the table,
your eyes a corridor
I could never walk through,
your voice a rusted hinge,
always catching, never fixed.
I traced patience in your shoulders,
in the way your calloused palms
pressed bills flat on the counter —
lights / rent / food —
your love reduced
to the weight of paper.
Isaiah Alexander is a queer, biracial poet from Houston who writes about heartbreak, healing, family, and all the messy stuff in between. His chapbook Find Me in the Void is out now with Bottlecap Press. His work has also shown up in places like Boudin Magazine, Cozy Ink Press, Ribs Magazine, Everscribe, Moss Puppy, Driplit Magazine, and A Few Words Magazine. He’s been a columnist, reporter, and music journalist, but poetry is where he feels most at home. You can find him @theebadwriter across Instagram, Threads, and X.
