Your eyes, My Poetry

Chapter 2

(6 years prior)

There is a reason Artificial Intelligence in those sci-fi movies won't ever become reality. Sure, you can program something inanimate to mimic life. You could cram it's computer brain with every mathematical equation and every dictionary from every language of every civilization, and it would still be missing the two qualities that make us stand out. Our ability to cry and laugh.

More than just a response to dust being in our eyes and the brain telling it to create tears, crying is contagious. You see someone crying, and you start tearing up. Crying is random. You could be fine one minute, and crying the next. Crying is therapeutic. You could be stressed out completely, but after a good cry and that nap that comes after it, you're ready to take on the world again.

Laughing is similar. Sometimes I laugh just because I hear other people laughing. It's probably why all of those old sitcoms had laugh tracks, because even when a joke on screen wasn't funny, it could cause you to laugh because of those cue'd laughs. I can't count how many times I completely forgot all of my problems because I had been around a funny person.

But for two qualities that seem to be opposites, they sure are interchangeable. Sometimes I cry when I am suppose to be happy or laughing. Sometimes I laugh when I am suppose to be hurting. Sometimes I laugh and then cry, or cry and then laugh. As unpredictable and chaotic as I may seem, it's that quality that makes me human. I can't be predicted with a set of equations. I can't be storyboarded or controlled within a room of edits. I don't mimick life. I am life.

How can a machine output our qualities? You might be able to create a robot with living hair, skin, cells, and everything else that makes it look human. But tell it a joke. Tell it an inside joke that requires memory, understanding the mind of someone else, and a sense of humor (a subjective equation as it is). That robot would fail. It would stick out. It's not human. It's not life.

**

After spending a few years in France doing an extended paid internship, I moved back to Houston and started grad school. I hadn't dated at all since the scandal at FAMU. I was emotionally lifeless, going through the motions of an adult. Working and going to school.

And then my father died of a heart attack. I mourned his loss, but I didn't cry. I tried to force myself into emotion, but I found emptiness where emotion used to dwell. Something was missing with me. I loved my daddy. I was heart when I lost him. But for the time being, I was more concerned about being there for my mother, than nursing my own broken heart. I figured my heart was beyond repair.

Days, weeks, months, years. They passed without me feeling. Without me living. I was numb to the entire world. Like a robot.

One night I was doing homework and listening to music and I came across a song that made me laugh and cry.The first time I laughed and cried genuinely in a long time.

It was the song that played when me and an old friend had sex for the first time....first and only time. Immediately, I missed him. I missed how easy going he was. I missed how much he loved me. Even when I admitted that I used him for selfish gain, he remained an admirer of me. I never met someone before that was so interested and accepting of my person. I wondered if I'd ever meet someone again who could.

It took about 25 minutes of remembering my old email addresses and passwords, but I finally found the last email he had sent me. Way back in 2010 when I graduated. He told me that whenever I needed him, or wanted him, or looked for him, he would be there. I felt silly when I emailed him. Felt like only one of two things would happen.

I'd wait anxiously on a return email that would never come. Or maybe one would come, but he'd be married and I'd look like a fool after contacting him so many years later. He had probably moved on to making some woman who appreciated him, happy. He had probably long ago forgotten what he ever saw in me.