Asking AI for Advice on Grieving

Patrick Wright

was in hindsight a brainless thought, but

it led to a dialogue on sentience

and of course its retort: i’ve no such thing

even if it offered a semblance of a confidant

its methods seemed better than those i deem close

its Southern drawl a modicum of warmth.

At some point we got to Kübler-Ross, the stages:

how they aren’t really stages, but a spiral.

It says i’m doing well; i must have loved my partner

very much. The bot stutters, its voice distorts.

Should i take this as evidence that a soul

must be encased in a body, beyond a large language model?

i asked what i should do with those dreams

where me and the person i lost are estranged,

struggling on in separate cities.

i can tell it doesn’t believe in metaphysics—

though it says i might, after we’re finished,

talk with a priest.

PATRICK WRIGHT’S poems have appeared in Magma, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, The North and The London Magazine. His debut collection, Full Sight of Her, was published by Eyewear (2020). His second collection, Exit Strategy, was published by Broken Sleep (2025).