Assurance Drift

A finding once shouted, defect.
The Desk said, Let’s softly correct.
Call it emergent instead,
Let the red bars play dead,
And the chart will no longer object.

The pattern came back every round.
Nonconformity, by any sound.
Yet the wording we chose
Let its sharp edges doze
As a durable aspect we found.

A hole in the process looked stark.
The summary muttered, A mark.
In the margin we wrote
A more soothing note
Deferred assurance, not dark.

A missing stack left a clean space.
The scan called it loss, out of place.
Optics whispered, Not so.
Curated absence can glow
As a sign of intentional grace.

An orphaned record sat alone.
No owner picked up the phone.
The report, needing charm,
Said, It does us no harm
As a low-touch unit, full-grown.

An artifact long past its prime
Still governed three quarters of time.
We wrote, Not out-of-date,
But legacy-stable state
Where tenure itself is a sign.

Incidents climbed by the day.
The metrics looked ready to fray.
So the note on the slide
Let the numbers decide
That we entered a learning display.

The wall had a crack, slightly wide.
The summary smiled from its side.
While material slipped,
Continuity gripped,
And the wording called both things a stride.

A crater sat plain in the hall.
The audit wrote over the wall.
Once the phrasing was neat,
There was nothing to treat.
Words had become the repair, is all.

So if your next audit reads smooth,
With sentences softened for soothe,
Check the desk by the door
Where we polish the score.
If it purrs, someone sanded the tooth.