Allegory   You must have signed up for it — that math class, the hard one, so they said — but you never showed up or cracked the book, just ran out of gas,   got distracted, had better things to do. The final’s tomorrow. You have to pass — you have to. And you would pass if they knew   it’s not your fault — you took too big a load, missed the memo on the drop date. A few more hours, you plead — this test, it’s all in code.     © Michael Fleming Dummerston, Vermont November 2023