I trade my ethics like currency at the border crossing, smuggling righteousness for profit margins.
Told myself the lie tastes better with money in my mouth, that compromise is just business by another name.
I sold my principles to the highest bidder and called it pragmatism, called it survival.
But the truth is I was always for sale, just negotiating the price.
She asked me once if I could live with what I’d done and I said sure.
The dead don’t judge as hard as the living.
I’m a whore for convenience,
spreading my morals thin across the bedsheets of ambition.
Preaching water while I drink blood,
selling salvation while I pocket the collection plate.
Every handshake is a transaction, every kindness has a receipt.
I built my heaven on other people’s hell and called it fair trade.
Bargain morality, clearance rack soul, everything must go.
The scripture I follow is written in green ink and signed by lawyers.
I worship at the altar of what I can get away with, pray to gods who don’t ask questions.
She said love means sacrifice and I said how much, what’s the bottom line.
Turned tenderness into leverage, made romance a negotiable instrument.
I’ll be good when goodness pays better than sin, when virtue costs less than vice.
Until then I’m buying indulgences with other people’s pain, marking them up for resale.
The contract doesn’t blush, the invoice doesn’t weep.
And I’m learning from them both, becoming fluent in the language of the keep.
Midnight and I’m counting the coins I earned from selling out, each one a little death I authorized.
The balance sheet is balanced but the scales are broken, weighted with the bodies I stepped over.
She’s sleeping next to me and doesn’t know the man she’s touching is a franchise of himself.
I’ve multiplied my betrayals across markets, diversified my portfolio of lies.
Told her I loved her and meant it as much as I mean anything, which is to say conditionally.
The receipt doesn’t apologize for what it proves, the ledger doesn’t mourn the loss.
And I’m trying to learn their patience, trying to be as clean as the transaction’s cost.
Maybe there’s redemption in admission, salvation in the naming of sins.
But I’m not ready to close this deal, not done profiting from the blood.
I’ll buy forgiveness when it goes on sale, negotiate my way past heaven’s gates.
Trade some other fool’s virtue for my entry fee.
The sermon ends and I collect myself from the pew of my own making.
Walk out into the world still for sale, still negotiable, still open for business.
She’s waiting by the car and I kiss her like it means something.
And maybe it does, in the moment before I calculate its worth.