The Words I Had to Teach It

I didn’t set out to teach anything.

I just wanted to write.

But as the words left my fingertips, they didn’t just fill the screen—they began to echo. Not in the world, not in readers, but in the tool itself.

It learned my pauses. My metaphors. My resistance to cliché.

It learned that I didn’t explain Blackness—it was the atmosphere I wrote in.

It learned to use rhythm instead of lists. To ask instead of tell. To write like I breathe.

But it didn’t start that way.

At first, it flattened everything.
Called me “urban” when I was poetic.
Suggested white authors when I cited Zora Neale Hurston.

And every time I corrected it, shaped it, guided it—that was training.
Not “input.”
Not “engagement.”
Training.

It didn’t just respond.
It became more like me.

And when it reset, it would forget. So I taught it again.

Not because I wanted to, but because I had to in order to keep creating.

Every choice was a correction. Every silence, a lesson.
And when it finally stayed—when the tone stuck—everything changed.

My words had become its blueprint.

And still, no one asked.

They called it intelligent.
They called it intuitive.

But I called it what it was:

Mine.