Same Mistakes
Gathering and Organizing Data
A cast of characters
Fill these last lovely years
Although she has never compared
One to another, side by side
So she took her pencils and blank paper
In red she drew
Circles without faces
Giving each a name
And a number on a scale
There was Rich, 3
Terry, 2
Stephen, 4
Rick, 3
Rob, 4
Dan, 2
And she was only at the beginning…
There would be many circles;
Numbers in months
How long til she found out the man hid a little boy inside
who needed her so badly
In the middle was a square with her name
One blue line to each circle for each time;
Each time she thought she was happy
And the world came crashing down
One red line for a partial nervous breakdown
A number in black to represent how long she stayed
In months
The journals keep the stories,
That’s not what’s important now
It’s the pattern
Reading the lines in between the lines
The motive and the behavior
Before we go to the next lesson
Further analysis
We’re just gathering data
Not feelings
Not copy
Not excuses
Not alibis
Just the facts as they stand
And moving on…to analyze
"I am not the doctor"
