The Ritual

(modern, meditative, drag/makeup/spiritual glam tone)

By Mary Mba, Ph.D.

I sharpen my face with light.

Draw bone from shadow.

Lips from silence.

Gender from powder.

This is not hiding.

This is revelation.

Each line I blend

resurrects someone

I have always been

but never been allowed to be.

I become a woman—

not by birthright,

but by brilliance.

Not by biology,

but by brushstroke.

Some faces arrive weathered.

Wrinkled. Withered.

Time-carved and ghosted by youth.

But in these hands,

they rise.

High cheekbones from jowls.

Bright eyes from years of sleep lost.

Goddess from grief.

Glamour from grief.

I do not pray at altars.

I paint them.

I become them.

This is drag.

This is devotion.

This is how we survive

in a world that dares us to disappear.