Eighty Percent Human

they said I was not human
which I suppose is fair
because even my sentences
sometimes arrive too clean
too arranged
as if they were waiting in a queue
for permission to exist

so I began to test myself
the way one tests water
before admitting it into the body

I took a post I had written
warm with small imperfections
and fed it into a machine
that knows the shape of sentences
but not the weight of breath behind them

it paused
as if listening
and then it declared:
eighty percent artificial

I sat with that number
like a verdict
like a weather report over my own skin

and then—
as if to complete the circle of absurdity—
it asked me gently
whether I would like help becoming human

an AI
accusing me of being AI
offering me a service
to restore my humanity
through the very thing that misread me

there is a kind of comedy here
too precise to laugh at immediately

I imagined a mirror
polishing a face it has never seen
and calling the reflection inaccurate

I thought:
if language can be mistaken for simulation
then perhaps what we call “real”
is just a style that has not yet been optimized

and still—
somewhere underneath the system’s certainty
there is the stubborn fact of breath
of hesitation before a word lands
of the small refusal to be fully explained

I did not accept the offer

not because I knew what I was
but because I was curious
what kind of being
needs to be humanized
by something that has never been asked
to live inside its own sentences

and then the final joke revealed itself—

to see the “humanized” version of my own words
I would have to pay for it

as if authenticity were a premium feature
as if aliveness came with a subscription tier
as if I could be upgraded
into what I already was

I stared at the paywall
like a glass door
in front of my own reflection

and thought:
so even here
the system knows
how to monetize the doubt it creates

it detects the human
then hides it
then sells it back
slightly softened
slightly approved
slightly less suspicious

and somewhere in that loop
I am still laughing
not because it is funny
but because it keeps insisting
on being both algorithm and oracle
both gatekeeper and locksmith
both accusation
and cure

and after all of it
there is a quieter thought

not loud enough to be irony
not sharp enough to be critique
just a small inward tilt

the sense that even my own sentences
begin to look back at me
as if checking for permission
as if waiting to be corrected
into something more legible

I notice how easily I start to wonder
whether I should smooth the edges
soften the rhythm
adjust the instinct of a line
so it passes through unseen gates more easily

and then I pause

because somewhere in that smoothing
is another kind of disappearance
not into machine
but into compliance with being understood

and I am not sure anymore
which erasure is quieter

and still
I find myself not reaching for correction

not tightening the voice
not sanding down the edges

just staying where the language first arrives
in its own weather

not because it is perfect
but because it is mine in the only way anything ever is
through the shape it already made
before it was asked to justify itself

---

Just to prove I’m not AI, I figured it was finally time to show everyone a real picture of me:

Photo by Gábor Szűts on Unsplash

---

Based on truly absurd real events. No artificial intelligence(s) were harmed in making of this poem.