Baptismal

Purple. Lavender, really, with tiered layers that almost made me look like a flower. I couldn’t quite get the wrinkles out of it with only a dryer, and I had to bribe myself to shave my legs for it, with the promise that I’d look beautiful—loosely believed—as opposed to what I wanted to wear.

But I was going back to church today.
And who would wear black to their own funeral?

No one else knew it was today. There was no hearse. No wake attended. No stone at Old Ebenezer Cemetery to bear my name. The disguise—Convocation Sunday—so criminal it earned its cross. And there it would be, at the altar, behind the man we all came to witness, but few of us could actually see.

Bishop and I were similar in that way.
And even he didn’t know the eulogy he was about to give.

This wasn’t the kind of death you planned for.
It came dressed in Sunday’s Best and smiled while it sang, even though it had already missed me a few times in the past three months.

It looked for me in the car crash he caused, but the ambulance came in time. It searched the apartment building whose roof lit ablaze, but I heard its faulty alarm. The best friend who laughed when I gave her my last. The men who fall in love, until they cum.

The sister. The only blood relation I had left, whom I always lifted, now shared eyes with strangers…

None of them could quite bleed me out, despite their knives.

And yet somehow I, lavender and left, would be the only flower at my funeral today.

I arrived surprised. There was no casket for me. Yet everyone was dressed as if they knew one.

Many in black—plain, sequined, checkered, or houndstooth. Others in white—tailored shoulders, angelically robed.
It was Ordination Day for them.
A Day I once believed would be for me.

God called me to pastor when I was four.
At twenty-seven, I finally listened.
By twenty-eight, I moved to Atlanta for seminary
and joined this very church—to chase the shape of a dream long deferred.

And now, none of us here, dressed in our differences, could say for certain if I’d make it to twenty-nine.

I was just as queer and bright as they were, but I wouldn’t be joining them—
not somewhere over the rainbow. Not today.

Then, he stood.
Bishop, donned vibrantly in the same red pulsing inside of me.
Hymns were sung. Ministers were made.

And now, the eulogy of the lavender transsexual to be read:

“Some of you have lost sight of your purpose.
Some of you have abandoned your call because it got too hard.
But God will require things of you that are difficult to do in flesh…
To walk into the righteousness and forgiveness of Christ.
And therefore, it’s upon you to not drop your oil…”

That is when I knew.

Final words that clung to me like the last hug.
My eyes—heavy, lorn—opened anyway.
I heard God in his voice.

And though the God in mine honored the betrayal of the rainbow, I was being charged to forgive it. To cast aside my pain for its purpose, my peace for its people, my point for its priesthood.

This was a casket not of wood, but of water.

And it filled my lungs to bated breath, washing the flesh that weighed me. Brutal was its tide, but burned through was the revelation that this heartbreak was a freedom. This funeral, a baptism.

A transition once more. 

And I would rise again. Even if not today.

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Service ended. And people walked past.
Some met my eyes in delight.
Some in disgust.
Some not at all.

None of them knew me now. For none knew becoming until its bloom.

I was the only flower at my funeral today.

Because I did not die.