Yesterday we entered a quiet room for an evening dinner feast with our friends, ones we’d been living and traveling with daily for the past three years.

Yesterday when the feast was prepared, you took up a demeaning position, and washed my feet… and those of all our friends who were there.

Yesterday as we shared table together, we talked of so many things… and a quiet eternal wisdom from your lips filled the room. The love and care that you felt for us was almost tangible in those words you spoke.

Yesterday I began to see the depth of our friendship, and its eternal nature—but I very quickly lost my hold on it.

Yesterday we shared bread, we shared wine, we shared a meal rife with the symbols of divine promise.

Yesterday you finally told us, straight out, that you are the Messiah.

Yesterday you said one of us would betray you. You dipped a piece of bread in a bowl and gave it to me. It felt so dark.

Yesterday you told me to do quickly what I was going to do. How could you have known?

Yesterday I took money as a ransom for delivering you over to your enemies.

Yesterday they paid me.

Yesterday I thought they only wanted to talk, to detain you for a while, perhaps rough you up just a little, to scare you… make you stop the teachings that they think are such a threat to them.

Yesterday I walked up to you in your favorite garden, and kissed you on the cheek. Betrayed you with a kiss. A farewell kiss.

Yesterday they led you away, they beat you. They called it a trial, but I’ve heard how it was just a sham.

Yesterday they killed you, put you to death in the most gruesome way that we know.

Yesterday, the meal we enjoyed together was your last. Perhaps it was my last as well… I can take no food now, have no thought for wine. I am sick.

Yesterday I tried to give the money back… but they refused it. “Blood money” they called it. I thought they were the ones who tainted it, but it was me. I just had no idea. I threw it on the floor and stormed out.

Yesterday everything went black, and I realized then what I’d done. Everything became blacker still, and I wept.

Yesterday I lost a friend. Sold a friendship, for thirty pieces of silver—that’s how much they gave me. Thirty fucking pieces of silver—did you know that too?

Today I have nothing.

Today I am damned.

Today I have lost my grip on the love you showed a few short hours ago… the hours on the clock are few, but the sense of them agonizing… seeming as days, weeks. Moving so fast and feeling so slow.

Today I recall your words, and know that the things I had told myself to rationalize what I’d done are empty, hollow… all lies.

Today you are dead. All hope, lost… we all are dead.

Tomorrow perhaps I’ll realize you are still the fullness of divine promise, still the one of whom the feast symbols spoke. Perhaps not.

Tomorrow perhaps I’ll understand how in ransoming you for money, I allowed you to ransom your life for mine. Perhaps not.

Tomorrow perhaps I’ll see you again. Perhaps not.

Tomorrow perhaps you will forgive all that I’ve done… but I fear I shan’t forgive myself, not ever. No. Perhaps not.

What if tomorrow never comes?