Sestina of Betrayal

Miranda had known that Jason’s best friend

in college was the girl who lived next door    

to his parents in the small town where he     

had grown up, but the two had never met,    

and Miranda had long dismissed the threat.  

“Susan will be in New Orleans next week.”  

Miranda smiled sweetly, knees growing weak,

and waited for Jason to suggest his friend

stay with them.  Unaware the threatening

storm, he opened windows, unlatched doors.

“She wants us to know a man she’s just met,”

Susan eyed the receding hairline he

tried to disguise and thought how funny he

would look with his hair completely gone, weeks

and years of careful combing, eyes meeting

mirror, images bending like old friends.

An invitation was given, the door

flung open with no thought of  winter threat.

The couple arrived, and nothing threatening

could be seen in the warm welcome when he

stood with his wife at the wide open door.

But Jason would learn something new that week

about Miranda, her history of  friends,

and find that not only had she met

Susan’s Mike before, she vowed not to meet

him again, so serious was his threat

to her sense of who she was. Jason’s friend,

on the other hand, had been used when she

allowed Mike to come with her that week

to enter her innocent friend’s open door.

  

“Beware of the past!” warned the door

while the whistle of the wind rose to meet

the epiphany latent in that week.

Neither Susan nor Jason sensed the threat

that Mike posed for Miranda, a threat he

intended to fulfill with his former friend.

Mike walked through the open door and the threat

of Miranda’s past met the present.  He

became the weak betrayer of friend by friend.