8/17/2019 Miller, Cody - Excuses, Excuses

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Excuses, Excuses

Dearest professor,

I’m sure you’ve heard them all — “sickness,” “breakup,”

“death,” “family emergency” (or just“emergency”), which conveniently fall threedays prior to said student’s spring break inCancun. — None of which I can tersely givefor my absence. Tough, as the Good Book says,“ Te truth will set you free.”

 As such, I shall relate my own:

 Tursday’s twilight, a devil and angelpitched tents on opposite shoulders. One seemedto whisper, “Live a little.”  Te otherrambled like a Protestant smothered inin the Holy Ghost. Ten, I remembered that T.S. Eliot line ‘bout “the awful daring ofa moment’s surrender.”

So, I hop aboard a silver rocket,springing off  of semi’s on I-76Head banging while my left-hand steers, devil hornsbent out on my right.

Sixty minutes later, skating into aFedLoan-paid college apartment complex. Te clouds are sneezing and can’t nd a tissue,and my patience thin gruel, so I corralmy Camry into an unauthorizedparking space. After which, my memoryickers in misty, seven-second Vines.

 Tere’s this booze connoisseur Jake (or Jack, James?),riffing like Coltrane on amphetamine

bout’ the pure-as-a-nuns-rapsheet moonshineknown only to the grizzled yinzers ofSouthwestern Pennsylvania, how ten beersin, he’s sober as a pallbearer.

It tasted like lighter uid to me.

8/17/2019 Miller, Cody - Excuses, Excuses

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One panic attack later, I squint likea half-drunken vampire, navigatingconfederate ag farm roads back home,after my phone dies. My glasses lost yet again.

 And, while technically  my coughing enginepassed the English hall fteen minutes priorto class, my eyes were chasing a distantPromised Land in a cathartic shower,mint toothpaste, and a geyser-hot French Press.

So, as I worry ‘bout whether I fucked thisrelationship thing up (yet again) anda hive of sociopathic spring bees stingmy skull for fun, I pen this apology

to you. If it seems irresponsible,I drop my saber and whisper “touché,”off ering but one humble retort:

 At least, there’s this poem.