Cursed (Iscariot)
Does this grief, you wonder, this deep gut wrenching grief,
serve as a penance for your iniquities?
Does that word ‘Iniquities’ even come close to describing the vile act
you have performed? Innocence, you have
given innocent blood to the brood of thirsty vipers.
You are a puppet with broken strings. Dangling without a marionette to control your
movements. You have done the bidding of
those who never saw you as anything more than a fool.
You lean back against a half dead tree and look out over the
field. Your hands are clasped together
as if in prayer, but who would listen to any plea of yours, even if you asked
for mercy, after what you’ve done. You
tip your head back and look up at that one solid branch, a single limb
extending from the trunk. You brought
the rope. It’s lying on the dead grass
beside you.
What have you done!
He called you out, before you had made your move. Told you to do what you must. How could he know? How could he have any idea? You think about that moment when the crowds
were gathered, pressing in against all of you.
Everyone was touching him, but he singled out one woman. He knew her fingers had touched his
garment. You should have opened your
eyes then, and peeled back the scales of pride.
But you were trapped in the embrace of the unholy desire to be noticed
and glorified.
You squeeze your folded hands so tight your intertwined fingers
ache. Tears saturate your cheeks. Did you act only on greed, or did you think
you were an instrument of some greater glory.
You will ask that same question of yourself as long as you are permitted
to take another prideful breath.
For the second time, you look up at the branch, the strong
one, the one that will support your weight until the birds of the air have had
their feast. You run your hand over the
rough fibers of the rope and consider the feel of its texture around your neck.
They played you for a fool, those vipers, the adulterous
rulers of this nation. They left you
carrying the load. Your name will be
slandered by the others. You will be a
dark stain in history, replaced by one inferior.
Are there lakes of fire, where one such as you will
perish? The dark arms of Sheol waits to
embrace you. Are you prepared for the
land of the forsaken?
But if you were to return, to ask forgiveness, from those you
called brothers, could you make amends, gain back their trust? Could you atone for your sin, or is this, as
it should be, a life for a life?
For a third time you look up, estimate, again, the strength
of the limb. You’ve made your
choice. You should have never walked in
their shoes. You were different from the
start. You didn’t labor for your
wage. You didn’t dirty your hands. You never threw a net into the sea and pulled
it back up when filled. Not like
them. They are the uneducated. Not like you.
You have a mind able to think, able to see what they will never know. Able to ask the questions they would never
seek answers to.
You rise slowly and wrap the rope over your shoulder. You shimmy up the trunk of the tree, using
branches brittle and dying. You nearly
fall once. Perhaps that fate would have
been easier, your head smashed against a stone.
The solid branch, seemingly higher now than before, stares
down you. Closer to the clouds than any
height you have achieved. It is your
destiny. It calls you. Beckons that you come. Beckons that you take every ounce of trouble
and lay it in the rigid fingers of its branches.
You have reach a point of no return, peering once again out
over the field. They call this place
Akeldama. It is a place that lacks hope,
a place that drinks the life of the hopeless.
One knot for the limb, and another for your neck. You take one deep breath and throw yourself
into death, arms stretched out as if to obtain flight. But relief for your depravity comes without
haste. Dangling like the puppet you are,
you are given one last look over the field of blood, a field of death. The sachet with the thirty pieces of silver,
Tyrian Shekels, the price for a slave, falls from your cloak and bursts open,
spreading the coins out over the dusty ground.
Your tortured world fades to black as one last series of thoughts
flicker through your feverish mind.
Your
name. One forever synonymous with traitor.
Your
name. One to be cursed for all time.
Your
name. One who betrays a friend.
Your
name. Iscariot.
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