The Algorithm of Modern Love

The profile curated, the photograph chosen

for optimal warmth, a smile that suggests

approachability, neither too frozen

nor eager. The system has run all the tests.

Shared tolerance for travel, matched ambition,

compatible sleep schedules, dogs preferred,

political alignment, disposition

toward brunch. The data gave its final word

and paired us with a confidence of ninety

four percent. The interface glowed green.

A chime. A heart. A notification, sprightly,

celebratory, love's own algorithm, keen

and thorough as a surgeon, very bright.

We are perfectly matched by design.

Across the table now, two people sit

in a restaurant chosen by an app

for atmosphere and ratings. Neither wit

nor accident brought us here, a list

of optimized decisions, check by check.

He glances at his screen. She glances too.

The silence is wreckage

assembled tidily. The evening through,

we nod at cues the algorithm foresaw,

perform the predicted laugh, the leaning in,

the touch of hands that follows, by some law

of calculated intimacy. Begin

again: the script runs smooth. The silence grows.

We are perfectly matched by design.

God, I am so tired, tired of the scoring,

the ranking of a human into data,

tired of being processed, tired of pouring

my chaos into fields for some curator

of compatibility to sort and grade.

I wanted accident. I wanted wrong

turns, someone loved despite the mess we made,

desire that had no business being strong

and was, irrational, ungoverned, strange,

the total loss of sense that sense cannot map,

the feeling that defied the given range,

that crashed the system, broke the tidy app

entirely. I wanted to be found

by fumbling, by error, by the pure

caprice of two lives happening to sound

one note together, brief, unplanned, unsure.

We are perfectly matched by design.

The interface glows on. The heart icon

pulses its approval. Ninety-four

percent. The evening ends. We carry on.

The algorithm opens up once more.