A Thousand Mornings Without Mike

what AI imagines this is like

Christmas 2016. No cream or sugar, actually (like a Marine!)

I am writing about AI and reality tomorrow, as a person who is not a fan and would prefer a real artist’s work. But I also thought it important to know, in a know thy enemy kind of way, What AI would do if I told it to do my job. So I told it to do my job. The title is AI’s idea. I’ve had 2,412 mornings without Mike.

What AI spit out when I gave it this prompt, with everything that is actually true bolded and italicized:

Write a 1000 word essay on grief from the POV of a widow obsessed with her dead husband Mike:

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It’s been two years, seven months, and fourteen days since Mike died. I count them like prayers. Like beads on a rosary, each morning I wake and say, “Another day without him.” That’s how I mark time now—not in seasons or holidays, but in Mike-less mornings. My name is Anna, and I am his widow. That’s not just a fact, it’s my identity. Everything else fell away when he did.

We were married for sixteen years and three months. Our life wasn’t perfect—what life is? But he was perfect to me. He had this crooked smile, like he knew something you didn’t. And he’d get this look when he was working in the garage or fixing the sink, a kind of quiet concentration that made the world slow down around him. I used to stand in the doorway and just watch him. It’s not love if you don’t know how someone holds a wrench.

They say grief changes over time. That it softens, like sea glass worn down by waves. But mine? Mine is sharper now. More precise. It's become a kind of ritual. I make his coffee every morning—black, one sugar, just the way he liked it—and pour it into his favorite mug. The handle’s chipped. I never throw it out. The mug sits across from me at the kitchen table, steam rising into the silence. I talk to it sometimes. Sometimes I cry into it.¹