If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.
There are several mathematical theorems which say almost exactly
that. But these theorems say nothing about how much intelligence may
be displayed if a machine makes no pretense at infallibility.
—Alan Turing

The relics of your hospital stays
repined in the corner where they dropped.
Brought to reckoning, I found
the things that made you bright; then too
the teddy bear you didn’t bond with,
the chemo caps you never wore,
the cards and gifts you never opened,
breaking each gesture’s arc with sour
distrust. You knew, or should have known,
there’d be a word for that. You had
a List. All-or-nothing thinking,
it said, Overgeneralization.
You gave me a copy. Don’t let me get
away with Labeling, you said,
or Personalization. I thought
the work in discord with my role
of friend and lover, and so forbore,
but hailed the new accession of
awareness, your                                            Singularity,
wondered how far it might take you.

We both had jobs we hated, but I
was first to break; you carried me
since then, doing what I could not.
I saw how that dissymmetry
fed routine resentments, added
new ones, made you feel alone.
I ran the house, found babysitters,
volunteered in classrooms, managed
finances, did the taxes, made travel
arrangements, supported you in all
you thought important. Now you’re gone,
and the firm shoves benefits my way,
I wonder why I ever thought
myself the giving one.

You smiled for new arrivals by
your last bed, but not for me, who’d been
there every day. I feared you felt
resentment’s sway and held aloof
when I only wished to wrap you in
love’s warm embrace. Or was reticence born
of fleshly pain alone, and my
misgivings assort under Jumping to
Conclusions, subtype Mind Reading?

There’s grace in clarity, but some
leaven of illogic must remain
to satisfy the will toward meaning:
the mind’s relentless discernment,
casting about for answers, always
finding them, never at a loss,
preferring the wrong answer to none at all.
Machines of Loving Grace know this:
If logic cannot choose,
a hunch will break the tie.