My Santiago

My Adelaide

Stepping out on the tarmac, Into my unfamiliar life, Away from one my skin was in, One where I was me; Into the biting Adelaide night, Bleak August, Last month of winter. The smell is antiseptic, Clean - too clean for my humid, fecund lungs, Almost.

Can clean air kill?

I am now cut adrift In a sea of shuttered blinds,

Empty streets, Stealthy light,

Dim glow from houses, Empty land less people.

It seems, I am different here; Here I am unknown, Stared at unknown, Different skin unknown,

Accent unknown, Ignored unknown.

But it works for me, This difference, if you let it.

I become who I want to be, And no one has doubt, Or dares argue

with my versions of my histories.

And, as I move into my adult life, Adelaide grows on me;

Its clean skin envelops me, And remakes me into a man