De-Identified You
Advisory – The crisis line subject matter is difficult and may be triggering. The poem references human anguish, thoughts of death, and self-harm. The poem is not about a specific person.
Dedication – For those of us with our names removed.
De-Identified You
I.
Sobbing over the crisis line
Did your voice-to-text
software
transcribe tears
with 94% accuracy?
Did your IRB research
show algorithms how
to squeeze
and tease sentiment
from a tremoring voice?
Did you weight
the intensity of terror?
Did you filter out
the background noise
of the crying child?
Did you capture and calibrate
the ten-year old’s data
outliers, wisdom and maturity?
Born from hiding, hiding, hiding
dark thoughts from mom.
Did you get hopelessness
with its downward inflections,
monotone,
trailing whispers,
pauses, and sighs?
Did you get exhaustion?
Insomnia, panicky dread
of the re-living dream?
Did you get the shaking hands,
blades and blood?
II.
Did you really code
for effectiveness score?
Auto-flag for review
machine-turning emotions, time
to take another call.
Did you ask
for permission
from a person
too fragile
to touch?
Calling you
trusting you
from places
no one
wants to be.
Did you ask
the ones
who answer?
The ones who give
the warm close.
III.
Please, humans only
inside the terrible
beautiful places
of lost hope
and last resort.
Tim Reierson
September 24, 2023
