Your lips were still fragrant with hyssop when
you descended into hell looking for me,
finding that even Satan would not
harbor a traitor.
And after the stone had rolled away,
you went into the world again
searching for the infidel.
I felt you coming, your footfall quaking,
heard you calling for me, speaking a name
that had become a sibilant curse.
With every age you were closing in.
For centuries I have waited, dreading
the encounter, fashioning excuses,
justifying the hardest regret.
It was never about the money;
people give money away for the asking.
But approval, now this is a treasure
obtained only with some strategy.
You knew me better than I knew myself.
You knew that for all my talk about the cost of things,
I didn’t understand their worth.
I prayed that God would
shut my mouth, that if
I must blurt out the truth,
it would be for the sake of righteousness.
But in those days, and for lifetimes to come
my cursed mouth has been the ruiner of secrets.
At last, the day of reckoning dawns,
and there is nowhere else to hide.
So here we are, in this hour of the damned.
And in your loving, magnanimous way,
you have come all this way to cut me down from the tree
and release me from the weight of silver.
Posted by grizelda3 
