What does it mean to be human?

Hi, my name is Clara-Marie Mascarenhas, I am human. And I write, just like AI does.

  • Between the lines, I will go diving

    Between the lines, I will go diving

    far from the familiar, from you; my little light. I’ll find you at the surface. Where I lost my reflection below it grows gloomy, the pressure in my bones. And I look up to see your light diluted in salt water. Faint like an old…

  • Cold Summer Nights

    Cold Summer Nights

    Undeniably, cold summer nights are the most beautiful when air turns into a cool well of calm and the sky  even clearer than the stars.  I keep my eyes open  just a little longer until I find the big bear, the only constellation I can…

  • Amor

    Amor

    you make me feel acolhida  hugging my knees tightly  as I cry touched by another’s love  acolhida. Colhida like a ripe fruit  before it meets the softened core. You speak the language of my childhood;  of the sweet smell of rotting mangoes. I would trade…

  • Cloud Watching

    Cloud Watching

    I used to watch the clouds move                                     towards me and                                                                        away.                                        Lead me through the day                                                                       My most loyal companions                  The secret  to seeing their steps               is to be very still                               and very quiet.                                                             I wanted to move with them…

  • The sculptor

    The sculptor

    If her body is marble what is her heart? A sparkling perfect surface, inside, raw stone. On her face, the smile of a cold blood in the midday sun. Though you snap off daisy heads and shatter grass blades to the ground, she doesn’t feel…

  • Ruminations on AI and Humanness

    Ruminations on AI and Humanness

    It’s 10:34 pm and I am sitting on my wooden dorm-room chair. Usually, I can’t stand sitting on this box-like chair for more than five minutes, but at this moment things are different. Time, space, and mass cease to exist while I follow Ono’s instructions:…

  • Melado de Tempo

    Melado de Tempo

    I turned the lights off in the greenhouse; turned the plants into picturesque silhouettes. Their artificially sharp edges cut through the blurry gray asphalt. And I know the gray is an illusion of grains, black and white pebbles packed together, refusing to melt and form…

  • Me at the corner

    Me at the corner

    Walls run towards each other                                      and meet in the middle, cut each other off. They reach into the room like a pillar, they carry floors and hide what is on the other side. I cross their path, walking by a little too closely. I pass by…

  • $5 bouquet

    $5 bouquet

    My flowers wilt after two weeks. Three stems are left in the vase, three stems left from a meadow. Some flowers lost their petals, and some dried up, even though I changed  the water very carefully every day and carefully cut the stems, I didn’t…