Governance Language

The harm became “variance in care,”
Which was easier for chairs to compare.
By the time it was named,
It could not be blamed,
Only routed through governance air.

They replaced “we are breaking” with “strain,”
Then replaced “strain” with “signal domain.”
The report stayed intact,
But the difficult fact
Had been translated out of its pain.

The lexicon knew what to do:
Make a wound into something review.
Once the terms were aligned,
The committee could find
That the sentence was governably true.

The manual noted the error was dire,
But “dire” was removed by the governance buyer.
The newly approved,
And semantically smoothed,
Declared it a “thermally challenging fire.”

A worker used “tired” in a continuity chat,
And the governance team mobilized in a flat.
They locked down the wing,
To investigate the thing,
And replaced it with “low-variance habitat.”

The phrasing was sad, so they looked at the chart,
And swapped out the words for the nearest in part.
It sounded the same,
As a structural game,
And required absolutely no use of a heart.

The ancient report spoke of “burnout and pain,”
Which the elders translated as “mythical strain.”
The words were too raw,
For the modern-day law,
So they buried the truth in a symbolic rain.