Still Life: Transvestite, Daylilies

Because he's still becoming, because he's six-feet four, at least, and growing out blonde hair, because he wears a faded floral blouse, maybe from the local Goodwill, and men's nicked work boots. Because his small breasts shrink beneath his massive shoulders and his gait seems off, crooked, as if both legs, stiff as pokers, had been snapped and glued - slap-dash- back together. Because he stops in the hot Way - exhausted, anguished, pink lipsticked mouth tugged down, eyes casting about - and leans against a fence ablaze with orange lilies. (They are half-blown cornets, not quite become the trumpets of full bloom.) Because the sturdy stalks of green lean in toward his reckoning, his face, haggard as chipped bricks. Because the summer sun has forced him into spotlight. Because this tableau of in-between is both about erasure and new blooming. Because he's simply someone feeling sad. Then let the why be lost. Ask instead: Who willingly transforms? Who names the meta- morphosis? How will we finally know the hour of arrival?