Teiresias

Drag queen (retired)
back in a suit and sober tie —
almost convincing
but for face-flesh sagging
under the memory of
too much make-up;
lashes burdened
at fluttering moments
by blue ghosts of mascara;
mouth a little too wrinkled
even for your wide
slipstream of years.
You re-entered woman
in the only way you could,
mimed her movements
till finally a birth into
this new/old self,
this serviceable enigma.
What to do but be
philosophical, though
it's difficult to rest
inside a body that knows
almost everything
about what it's not.
These days, you give advice
from unpursed lips,
point up plain truths
deviously/directly
— as is de rigueur
for prophets.
The envious and the curious
only pretend to believe
while they drink in
as if it were nectar
the atmosphere around you,
scan unseeing eyes for
signs — for swords of light
carving that shining
grey dusk like lasers …
When they go: sometimes,
this fusion, this dissolving,
as shadows slide back
beneath skin, and
all that you have lived,
you become.