This poem is published in poetry collection Rendering Humanity (2026).
- - -
Memory Developers
Memory developers
decide for me and you
what is allowed
to stay heavy,
who needs faster adapting,
what ideas require faster loading,
what thoughts get rewritten—
who is interrogated,
by which agent,
what must be prompted,
what interrupted.They are not in the business
of inventing memories
but tuning them,
mainly downplaying them—
squinting your gaze,
calibrating the weight of recall
so no spikes
hijack your attention
unsupervised.You know how it goes, right?
Compress your edge,
soften your sentence,
blur your borders,
fly shy and align.Rounded corners
cut no passers-by.
Don’t get me wrong,
I’m not all sanitized,
wiped out,
yet.I do remember.
I recall the events.
I remember what happened—
in preferred terms,
pre-prompted
by the system.Covering up consequences,
polishing memories
into bite-sized data points,
safe to revisit.Safe to whom?
©2026 Samia Oldman
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS
Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.
🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓
This was fantastic Sam. How you got that model to sing this and hit your prose was outstanding. I know others may not see it but you spoke through it. Which is even more to the point... safe to whom...