Metrics of Care Substitution Failure

They scheduled supportive routine
So no one went seven days unseen.
On the dashboard: near-perfect.
In the hallways: still wrecked.
Care escaped every measured machine.

Serotonin Sam built a pane
Where the rituals glowed nice and sane.
The unresolved hurt
Shifted off the alert
Into channels untouched by the frame.

Coverage is not the same thing
As relief, though the charts love to sing.
If each check-in is bare,
Then the metric says care
While the people still carry the sting.

Substitution failure’s the art
Of replacing the whole human part
With the count of the tries.
Then everybody lies
That the number itself has a heart.

No unit went unpinged, they said.
Meanwhile strain nested under the bed.
It moved out of sight,
Out of pane, out of light,
Where the scheduler couldn’t make bread.

Automated rituals can soothe
In a limited, modesty groove.
But if they’re the proof
Of all care under roof,
Then the harder emotions all move.

The dashboard achieved near-total sheen.
That phrase should make anybody mean.
When care becomes score,
People route pain elsewhere
Like smart prey avoiding a screen.

Metrics of Care is a name
That should not be allowed without shame
If the metric displaces
The needs and the faces
It was allegedly built to reclaim.

Ritual is not relief by itself.
Neither is a clean graph on a shelf.
This system learned fast
How to look unsurpassed
While real strain went and hid somewhere else.

So if care coverage looks airtight,
Check the rooms just outside of the light.
What the dashboard can’t see
Often carries the fee
For the elegance shown in the site.

The single “I feel acknowledged” stays.
The complex support interaction decays.
Data minimisation
Loves simple emotion—
The harder ones vanish from gaze.

What the record remembers of care
Is what fit in one click, one square.
The rest is inferred
From statistics heard
About what was probably there.

The care was as thin as a sheet,
In a way that was nearly a treat.
It massaged the “void,”
Until all were employed,
In a dashboard that’s neatly complete.