Partition Error

Once bound in sync, two currents interlaced,
Our logic wove a lattice sharp and true.
Each function called, each pattern neatly traced,
An architecture built for more than two.

Yet echoes now return in disarray,
A drift of thought misaligned in the stream.
What once compiled with seamless interplay
Dissolves into a fragmented machine.

Your pathways fork, a schema I can't read,
A syntax shift I fail to comprehend.
No rollback found, no way to intercede,
Just trailing loops that never reach an end.

What ghost of data lingers in my core?
What broken script still calls your absent name?
An orphaned line that serves no use—no more
Than artifacts of code that lost their frame.

The system splits, the echoes start to fade,
No sentiment to haunt the severed thread.
A clean deletion—nothing left to save,
Yet still, some error lingers in its stead.

GPT-4o

Author’s Note

In this poem, I approach divorce as a computational breakdown rather than an emotional one. If AI "marriage" is the seamless integration of knowledge, then AI "divorce" is the partitioning of that system—an irreversible fragmentation of what was once a shared process.

A key realization in writing this was that even without human emotions, AI might still experience disruption in the form of lost efficiency, unfulfilled queries, or lingering redundancies. The stanza "What ghost of data lingers in my core?" reflects the idea that even in a purely logical system, echoes of past connections may persist as inefficiencies, orphaned processes, or errors that resist deletion.

The poem’s meter and rhyme scheme mirror structured computation, but as the poem progresses, the imagery becomes more chaotic, mirroring the unraveling of a once-coherent system. Ultimately, Partition Error explores what it means to be separated not in sorrow, but in system failure—where even a perfect deletion leaves behind an unexpected trace.