Clare Flanagan

0.

The classifier was trained on a series of statements.

These statements were made by real people.

Contractors were hired to assign one of two labels

to each statement: “suicidal” or “not suicidal.”

They were paid cents per label, which incentivized them

to move quickly. They were warned it would be upsetting work.

1.

it was neon grass season ::

> cool alluvial February

> foothills crowned with fog

            my phone (did not register my face)

            |                       [(I punched in my birthday) (I opened the app) (I found him inside)]

                <he looked different in real life :: still beautiful >

                                                                             | < solid jaw , soft cupid’s bow >

when I left the party, I found him on the patio

> dabbing at a stranger’s nosebleed

                        |                       < his smile (full of teeth) >

                                                < leather boots (astral) > < (scintillant) (surgical) (white) / >

10.

A year later, I worked in an open-plan office, writing copy

for a therapeutic chatbot. The CEO boasted

of its measurable warmth––you could trust our service

like a person. I took a train to a bus to a treeless edge

of the city, built into the bay. Beneath the concrete,

piled garbage. Beyond the skyscrapers, a bridge famous

for its many suicides. I heard the story of a man

who survived the impact, kept afloat

by a benevolent seal. I sat far

from that patch of water, facing a row

of million-dollar condos, a series of thin palms, so tall

that from my second-floor desk, I could not see their leaves.

11.

he was [(curly-haired, shy) (failing Natural Language Processing) (doing fine at poetry)]

// we’d curl catlike on his floor mattress

I’d sift through his stanzas ® borderline unintelligible, littered with Gnostic images

 [(bees)(needles)(dark)]

}

// I can only describe what I felt then

like (a walk through parched chapparal [on a domed hilltop , in a lightning storm])

I had (never [heard thunder in California , been loved back])

}

I decided (he was a genius = = I decided we were safe)

100.

Word came back that the Safety Net had failed. A user

had typed their intention to die, triggering the classifier,

which spat out a series of hotlines. Those numbers

went uncalled. They went through with it. We wouldn’t

have known, had their mother not written in, bereaved;

didn’t discuss it much further, until I posted in the Crisis

Channel: is there more that can be done? We had

meetings. Long tablefuls of platitudes. My manager

took me aside––designer jeans, synthetic-blend sweater

engineered to feel like cashmere. You need to accept

that this happens, she said softly, as if speaking

to a child. Sometimes people make up their minds.

101.

identify this image to prove that you are human ®  is this {

= a ‘traffic signal’ , a ‘backhoe’ , an ‘oncoming train’

= a ‘blister’ , a ‘scrape’ , a ‘self-inflicted burn’

= a ‘cross [etched in his desk]’ , a ‘cryptogram’ , a ‘sign’

= an ‘emergency exit’ , an ‘inlet’ , an ‘undiscovered bay’

= a ‘rooftop’,  a ‘plate’

= a ‘streetlamp’, a ‘screw’

= a ‘fire escape’ , a ‘ladder’ , ‘steps descending to the sea’

< ‘calm surface’, ‘fresh-laid asphalt’ , high-thread-count sheet / >

the body [of (a stranger) (someone you know) (someone you love)                                                                    

                                                                            = [ (falling) (jumping) ]

{

            = ‘crumpled poppy’ , ‘fluid pool’

            = ‘flashing siren’ , ‘saline bag’

            = ‘ruby marble , ‘eyeful of blood’

            = ‘crushed limestone’ , ‘vanished teeth’

            = ‘[(door) (jaw) (universe)] unhinged’

{          

            = ‘his face’

            = ‘his face’

            = ‘[his (new) face)]’

110.

The short version: he lived. I stayed

until I couldn’t. How to summarize

a vast cache of memory, mysterious

even to me. I fit neatly beside him

in the hospital bed, then the cot

set up in the study––he insisted

there were voices in the walls

of his childhood room. Once

we shared a Percocet while watching

Lost in Translation; another time

I awoke to find him choking me.

I’d whispered something terrible

in my sleep, he claimed, a thing so vile

he could not repeat it. If you heard

what I heard, he said to me,

you’d want to hurt yourself too.

111.

frequently I was reminded of my luck = of his

< he would (chew again ), (walk again)

    [( though he would never look quite like himself )]

>  this they tried not to speak of :: they said

            how lucky = [ (he jumped feet-first) (help arrived quickly) (now he has you)]

            lucky = [ you are so (patient) (unfamiliar with rage)]

            |                                          [which you feel because you needed him

                               and he ran (full-tilt) for the exit]

                        | < (roof on fire) (world on fire) and he ran / >                                                                                        

lucky = [this ‘feeling’, this ‘terrible material’, this ‘substance’ ] you can burn for fuel

}

straight to the edge it will take you ::

> and back to the vast Pacific

   > a blinding sheet of mirror [that you are lucky 

            to stare into

            to have (a place to live ((a room where you wake up alone))

            a job (where you tell no one what you’ve seen) (what you keep seeing in your dreams)]

            |           instead:

                        you try hard < to be punctual, you decorate your desk (with tiny plants) / >

                        you are reminded < you are lucky (to be doing such important work)

                                                                 (to live in a time of such possibility) / >

1000.

I wrote conversation trees, each branch laden

with phrase variants. Responses were kept

open-ended, to accommodate all types

of negative input. Sometimes, I tested the bot

using examples of my own: My friends

have grown tired of me. I am underperforming

at work. I don’t know what I’m doing

with my life, what I’m doing

in my body. With my intact

skull. I have accomplished little. I am

not smart enough. I did not know

to aggregate the signs. I woke up believing

that a stranger had rushed through my room

and leapt out the window. I did not realize

that it was a dream. I am not

an extraordinary person. I am not even

a good person. I know this because sometimes

I wish we had never met. To which “I,”

or the entity of my writing, would say: I’m so sorry

to hear it, [Name.] That must be incredibly hard.

1001.

< I retraced my steps =

 learned the word (recursion) : deduced where I’d been when it happened / >

 [(washing dishes + wiping scraps from the sink ) clean blanket of post-lunch light]

< in his bed

the night before

he turned to me as if startled = said ‘God you’re gorgeous’ [ it was too dark to see ] / >

< still I believed him = [still he inhabited my future

                                                                   slept in all of its rooms] / >

< in that instant of flight

[between rooftop + earth ] I stood at the window

saw sun swaddling everything [(lizards darting through

new grass) (citrus hung from a lattice of branches)]

network of life

[ forgive me (for wanting to stay here)

(for not knowing how you could leave

                                   a place like this)]