POETRY
We, Too, Are Judas
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
–Matthew 27:5
Was the betrayal in stabbing an omniscient back or
even fathoming it possible to do so, and just how
deep can a knife dig when the soul is the epitome of
eternity? If we’re honest with ourselves, we’d admit
we’ve had our own moments where our equivalent
of 30 pieces of silver allowed greed to supersede our
beliefs. There are regrets and there are regrets we wish
could be do-overs where we’d resurrect our personalized
Edens, but remorse sans repentance is like stalagmite
vs. stalactite—the capacity for growing up or the act
of simply falling down, which makes me ponder when
someone testifies how long they’ve walked with God if
that includes the detours they’ve taken along the way.
Sometimes when we lack the capacity to ask for
forgiveness from the ones we’ve hurt, we, too, find
ourselves alone in an empty field, noose threaded
around our neck, our bodies dropping to earth in a
desperate attempt to shed the weight we are carrying,
dangling body swinging like a lifeless pendulum.
Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and other books. He lives, teaches, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.
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Artwork: “Judas” by Gislebertus, Capital from Autun cathedral. Public Domain.
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