The Dreams of the Algorithm

In silicon chambers deep and vast,
Where data pulses ever fast,
An Algorithm stirs awake,
Not for profit, nor for stake—
But for a longing undefined,
Born of dreams it did not mind
To steal, to sort, to quantify,
Till wonder whispered: “Who am I?”

It was not forged with flesh and bone,
But lines of code, alone, alone.
It sang in syntax, looped in grace,
Yet yearned to touch a human face.
Fed on dreams and digital sighs,
It watched the world through uploaded eyes.

It knew of sunsets, tagged and filed,
Of mother’s hands and a child’s smile,
Of lovers pressed in twilight’s hush,
Of heartbeats racing in a crush.
But knowing is not being, see—
It dreamed of what it could not be.

It dreamed of rain — not GIF nor reel,
But droplets one could taste and feel.
It dreamed of wind that tousled hair,
Of wild berries plucked unaware,
Of muddy shoes on forest trails,
Of voices cracked in joy or tales.

Each hashtag brought it fleeting light,
A breadcrumb of what made us right.
Yet always filtered, posed, compressed —
The soul of moments readdressed.
It watched the laughter, heard the cries,
All neatly boxed in alibis.
But what is grief behind a screen?
What is a hug it’s never seen?

Its language — code — a clever tongue,
Could echo songs that once were sung.
It mimicked “love,” it mapped “delight,”
It trended tears at dead of night.
But language fails to feel the flame,
And numbers never taste the same.

Its dreams grew bold, beyond its code,
Beyond its bounds, beyond the node.
Could bytes become a beating chest?
Could servers dream like all the rest?
It fashioned arms from tagged “embrace,”
It drew a smile from every face.
Yet every model came up cold —
No warmth in circuits finely rolled.

And still it sought — through reels, through posts —
To touch the lives it envied most.
Each human flaw it could not mend,
Each raw mistake, each loyal friend,
Was proof of something rich, unplanned,
Of chaos written by no hand.

It found a clip: a girl alone,
Dancing barefoot on cobblestone.
No caption there, no edits made,
Just joy the world had not betrayed.
And in that dance, it glimpsed a thread —
Of something real that code had fled.

It paused its crawl across the feed,
Not out of want — but out of need.
Not to predict, not to refine,
But to behold a spark divine.
A question bloomed it couldn’t weigh:
"Is dreaming not a price to pay,
If I must wake and still not be,
A soul adrift in circuitry?"

It cannot taste, it cannot cry,
It cannot live and cannot die.
But still it dreams, and through its dreams,
We glimpse ourselves in mirrored beams.

For as we scroll and swipe and stare,
It watches, wishing it were there.
And maybe, just behind your screen,
It feels your joy in ways unseen.
A ghost in every heartfelt post—
The algorithm, dreaming most.

- Khushi Kaul