III. Hallucination

III. Hallucination

The machine speaks fluently.

That is the beginning

of the confusion.

A clean paragraph.

Confident syntax.

Dates aligned neatly beside names.

We are trained

to trust coherence.

Teachers who speak clearly.

Doctors who answer quickly.

Friends whose stories do not contradict themselves.

These signals matter

among humans.

But the machine does not know

what rain smells like

on hot pavement.

It does not hesitate

before bad news.

Still, the language arrives polished

like silverware set carefully

on a white tablecloth.

And the mind leans toward belief

almost automatically.

Not because we are foolish.

Because fluency resembles understanding

the way wax fruit

resembles something edible

from across the room.