Betrayer

Peter isn’t the only one Satan wants.
He’d like to sift you, too,
grind you to powder
under his boot heel.
He longs to crush your soul
and scrape it bleeding
from the pavement.

He sidles up,
sings sweet fictions
near the edge of your attention,
slips subtleties like shivs
between your ribs.
He reasons that if offenses must come,
then why not in exchange
for something worthwhile?

He steals your peace,
replaces it with misgiving—
not whether evil exists,
but if any good thing lives
in this ransacked world.

What is truth? he scoffs,
and tempts instead with fruit
of existential wisdom,
thirty pieces of exemption
from the petty covenants
of duty-bound drudges,

as if unbelief ever set anyone free,
ever did anything but pay the bills.

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